The Opposite of Murder

“There’s a dead mouse on the roof of your car.”

“How does that happen?”

“Dad says the crows have been all around your car today. He just now noticed the mouse. The crows probably left it there.”

This seems aggressive for a crow. They don’t kill mice. They hunt smaller game, I think. This is strange and discomforting. And eerie: a dead mouse. I need to take a look at this. “Your father already took care of the mouse.”

I walk curbside and size up my 1984 Camaro. Fire engine red. I wonder if it has to do with the color: perhaps it enraged them? I think about such a strange event occurring a weekend after my first car purchase. Did I take away some territory of theirs? They couldn’t have killed a mouse, could they? It had to already be dead.

Next time round, they were more aggressive.

I was late for an Economics 201 class; there was a light mist and no one was about. As I walked the back path between Kane and Savery Halls, I felt the clawing at my head. The talons tangling in my hair passed in an instant as my body twisted to the ground. I expected to see a lone bird retreating from having mistaken my head for a nest…what I saw were three of them, circling me several times before alighting upon the architecture. Waiting to see what I would do next.

They clicked and cawed to each other as I slowly inched to a doorway. I wanted to be out of their sight, made uneasy by their boldness. I was convinced the act was overt and intended. These are intelligent birds. They are organized. I searched all of my past deeds for some wrongdoing, but I could not single out some provocation that could earn me this distinction. For some unknown reason, they had me marked.

Years would pass. I bought a home and became a static target. Each morning I would walk to the coffee shop, and the crows would announce from telephone pole to telephone pole that I was coming. They did little more than this. But they would only do it when I was alone, as though they wanted to convey to me and me only, the tenuousness of our co-existence.

The summer day was moving on as I returned home. Walking along the side of the house, I kicked a small object that could have been a large stray beauty bark or a cat’s dry turd. It skidded lightly along the hard ground, the weather beaten dead grass. I moved to it. With the side of my foot, I flicked it on its side. There was a pinpoint moon reflected in its tiny black eye. A baby crow. On closer look, I could see it expanding and contracting in its tiny rapid breathing; I could see the damaged wing. I could feel its terror, and my chest burned when I realized how I added to it.

I played out scenarios. I could go inside, and I know myself well enough to know: it would haunt me. I would wake up in the middle of the night, come outdoors, and check on it.

I could step on it. I could crush its neck and put it out of its misery. I would always feel dirty about this moment, I would feel especially bad tonight, but there would be a resolution.

I set down my book and my bag of groceries. I could not leave it. I could not. I chose to save it. Always the hardest option, because it begs a ‘how’ and a ‘what for’.

I picked up the bird to examine it. The wing was bloodied and the bird looked in shock. It could not defend itself. Taking it and nursing it would be a strange intrusion into nature. I could not see this playing out; I could not see myself slowly watching it live or die. I resolved to find a place of greater safety – somewhere where it could not be a neighborhood cat’s fatal play toy.

I walked about my property, dismissing various nooks and ridges as too human-made, too uncomfortable. A tree in my neighbor’s yard presented itself on the landscape: last year he had pruned all the branches to a base no higher than my chest, and this year it had fought back with a tangle of branches at eye level. Perfect. I found a nestling cross-section of leafy branch that would hide the tiny crow from predators, and tucked it in its new home. I stood back and looked at it. I never see baby crows. I only see these aggressive adults that hate me so.

I resigned the little bird to its fate. Perhaps it would survive, perhaps it would not. Death happens, and I felt at peace with my level of interference. Between life and death, I could at least lean in a direction – I could give a little nudge.

As soon as I awoke, as soon as the day broke, I had to check on the baby bird. I approached the tree scanning the ground all about; half-expecting to see the little mass expired below the branches. It was not. Nor was it where I left it. It was gone.

As I continued on my walk, the crows watched me. But today they were silent.