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Tuesday June 19th 2018Tim
Candler9
A member of my
extensive parental side had a story about Crows. It was
wartime, he'd escaped prison, he was on the run, food
and shelter harder and harder to find. One isolated
farmhouse became almost like a home, it was high in a
valley, and as the night came he'd return from foraging
for his own contribution to the warm kitchen table and
he could hide in the hills look down at the farm house,
check to see whether soldiers were visiting, which
they'd do sometimes in their search for partisans,
escapees, whatever they could find. The farmhouse had
three resident Crows, but a good chance they were
Ravens. The birds were fit, well feathered, agile in the
sky, they were usually content and they roosted in the
farm's ancient stone barn. The farmer was long gone,
he'd been killed in the war, the farmer's children, both
boys, had grown and were gone to know one knew where,
but their elderly mother still managed the farm as she
waited for her children to return, and she was pretty
good at hiding food and livestock from occupation
soldiers who were always hungry, well armed and
entitled.
Past
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One evening,
looking down at the farmhouse, there was no sign of
soldiers and the coast looked clear. But the Crows were
absent from their evening chatter on the barn roof.
Maybe they'd had already settled in for the night. There
was a chance with spring on its way they'd set their
minds to wandering. Possibly they'd all fallen to a
shotgun. There were easy answers. And yet, he remained
where he was, cold in the chill and damp just two
thousand yards from shelter. In the morning, there was
glint of sun on the barn, the farmhouse kitchen door
opened, cigarette butts casually tossed to see if the
farmer's wife would pick them up, save them from the dew
so she could smoke them in her pipe. Then a military
vehicle which had been hiding inside the barn fired up
it's engine. Off they went so as to be in time for
breakfast at their barracks, the Crows circling and
silent in the sky above them. And the thing about it
was, soon after his escape he'd once been rescued from
starvation by a little girl who'd given him a European
Robin to eat. Shown him how to cook it, insides and all,
nothing wasted. European Robin is about the size of a
Sparrow.
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