When I was a missionary, I spent five months with an elder who was a quarter Cherokee and who grew up on the reservation in North Carolina. We were going from house to house and knocking doors near Occidental College, and as we approached the porch of a small yellow house, my companion froze.
“Hold up there, Elder,” he said.
On the bannister of the porch stood a crow. It squawked at us.
“He ain’t leavin,” said my companion.
“Well, let’s go past him.”
“Uh uh,” he said. “Crows mean death.” And then he muttered something in Cherokee.
“So what are we gonna do?”
“We’re skippin this house. There’s death inside it.”
“All right,” I said, and we turned around and headed back to the street. “Have you seen anything weird happen with crows?”
“I saw bunch in a field once next to where I grew up. Next day, half a herd of cattle died in that field.”
Well, then.
So since that time, I’ve head a healthy suspicion of crows. To add to it, you know what a “flock” of crows is called? It’s not a “flock.” No, sir. It’s a murder.
Wednesday night, we took our recycling out. Recycling was due to come July 4, but being a holiday, it didn’t. Somehow, we got it in our minds that it was coming the following week; it came the following day and we missed the memo. Not knowing that, we had our recycling out, and as we walked up the driveway with Dobby for his walk Thursday morning, we saw some plastic takeout boxes scattered across the lawn. Lauren went to retrieve them, and I walked up to the top of our driveway where this dude landed on our light post and was absolutely unintimidated by my approach.
I stood a few feet away and took this picture, and he. Did. Not. Care. What he cared about was Lauren putting those plastic boxes back in the recycling bin because as soon as she did, he hopped down to the bin and pulled them out again. Absolute savage. I did not mess with him. And of course, he got to watch us haul our recycling back inside in utter humiliation when we learned that it wouldn’t be picked up for another week.
I would love to tell you that the crow signified nothing other than going after that freaking recycling, but I don’t know. That same day, a coworker’s terminally ill father passed away. As well, my sister-in-law’s father, a man who spoke at my dad’s funeral, was running his generator in the hellscape of Houston where he has no power because of the hurricane. He tripped over the extension cord, shattered his hip, and has to get a hip replacement as soon as possible. I’m not saying that the crow is connected to these things. I’m not saying he’s not either.
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