Stepped outside my office today to have a smoke; I swear I heard one crow say to another, "Come on! Come on!"Once when I was camping at Nickerson's with my kids, it was very early in the morning, I was still asleep in my tent, and I heard a voice shout, "Ma! Ma!"
"What? What?" I said, disgruntled. But when nobody answered, and I poked my head out of the tent, I saw only a crow, sitting on the picnic table.
Maybe it's because my path to and from work has changed, but so far this fall I haven't seen the endless waves of crows headed to their roost at twilight. After the crows' conversation this afternoon, I was remembering the invasion of Springfield College ten years ago by approximately 12,000 crows! At the time, it caused a great commotion, and the college was setting off noise cannons, placing artifical owls, etc., to drive them away.
Just for the hell of it, I called up Springfield College and asked the young man who answered the phone if there were still flocks of crows (to be correct, a murder of crows) hanging out at the college. There was a long pause (What kind of wierdo is this? I could hear him thinking) and then he said, "Actually, I don't think I've ever seen a crow on campus."
"OK, thanks a lot," I said, knowing it absolutely could not be true that every single crow had abandoned academia. But I guess they're not a problem anymore.
His response reminded me of my favorite story about Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti was being driven through the Indian countryside by two of his disciples. The disciples, sitting in the front seat, were having an hours-long and quite heated discussion about the nature of awareness. Finally one of the disciples turned around to Krishnamurti.
"What do you think awareness is, Master?"
"I think awareness is knowing when you've run over a goat," Krishamurti answered.
3 comments:
Well, I've been asking my sister for the past 3 weeks, "Where are the crows??"
Usually, around Halloween and the 1st week in November, there are huge flocks of them here - so many that my front yard and the street looks like an ocean of crows.
So it's not your imagination - the flocks are missing in this area too.
Have a good Thanksgiving!
Michaelann--
The crows are at my house...30 Salem Street in Springfield. And all up and down Mattoon Street, behind me in Armoury Common Park, and I think going all the way up through the Armory. There are thousands of them roosting evey night. (See my posts of November 27 and November 29 on my blog, A Luminous Halo, at www.cicilycorbett.blogspot.com.)
Best,
Cicily
Well, now we know! Deborah, I do know they pick new roosts from year to year, so I knew they were somewhere. I have a friend who becomes frightened and sad when she sees them passing, but it's always just the opposite for me...
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