Crow and raven

I have become fond of finding benches to rest upon while observing the world passing by. One never knows what entertaining scene one may witness. On Amelia Island we are fortunate to have many benches that overlook lovely vistas. Many of these benches are donated to our community in memory of a loved one. Recently, I found myself sitting on one such bench looking toward the St. Marys inlet. It was a lovely spring day with a gentle east wind comforting me in the late afternoon sun.

As I gazed at the landscape, I noticed a crow fly by with a full, unlit cigarette in its beak. The crow landed in a nearby cedar tree. A few minutes later, the same crow flew by again with another full, unlit cigarette in its beak. It vanished into the same cedar tree. Minutes later, the crow was back with yet another unlit cigarette. I grabbed my binoculars and waited for the crow to emerge from the cedar tree. I followed the crow as it flew out of the tree and landed on an unattended beach chair in the sand, near the water’s edge.

On the back of the beach chair was a backpack partially unzipped. The crow landed on the chair and was positioned well as it stuck its head into the small opening. A few seconds later, the crow’s head emerged with another unlit cigarette. With the long white cigarette in his beak, it flew back to the same cedar tree.

As I waited patiently to see what the crow would do next, I giggled at myself. There I was sitting on a bench spying on a thieving crow and completely entertained by it all. It was truly comical watching this scene unfold.

A few minutes passed by and the crow returned to the backpack once more. This time he pulled a plastic bag out of the backpack. The bag contained a small box inside. The crow managed to pull the box out of the plastic bag. The bag flew away in the wind while the crow pecked at the box. Eventually, the crow opened the box and dragged out a wrapped granola bar. After many failed attempts to fly with this oversized treasure, the crow abandoned it in the sand and flew back to the cedar tree. I found myself wondering what other treasures the crow had collected and hidden in the cedar tree.

Later that night, I opened my book of symbols and reflections on archetypal images and read about crows and ravens. Crows and ravens can invoke celestial thoughts with their caws and croaks. In the Northwest, Pacific Coast Indigenous people know Raven as “Real Chief,” the ministers of mystery. They can open the door to our psyches and coax us out of our conventional shells. The Norse god Odin had two ravens, Hugin and Munin, also known as Thought and Memory. They probed beneath the surface of things to bring the hidden truth to light.

Thought and Memory peck away at our illusions and pretensions at times and affect us as “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous birds of yore” as described by Edgar Allan Poe in “The Raven.”

Emily Dickinson wrote, “… Quickened toward all celestial things by crows I heard this morning – accept a loving caw from a nameless friend,” in 1885.

Apollo considered the crow a bird of divinity. He described falling in love with a crow maiden as the dark and light of the moon; a way of being in the world established on a different plane.

Crows and ravens have captured our attention for as long as man has walked on earth. They have been living on earth for 12 million years. Their bird brain is highly evolved and carries lots of knowledge. They can be found living on farmlands and in urban jungles. They exist from the tropics to the arctic. Crows and ravens are not inconspicuous, they are showoffs. They have been known to slide down snow drifts on their backs for fun. They can also be destructive and helpful.

Crows and ravens have applied their intelligence to become master opportunists. They seek and find and take and thieve. They do not wait for the door to be opened; they open it themselves, as I witnessed from the bench on which I was perched. They are endless entertainers mischievously exploiting human culture, subverting our fondest notion of human superiority.

In Ernest Thompson Seton’s “Wild Animals I Have Known,” he writes, “Here among the docks and the skunk cabbages, he unearthed a pile of shells and other white, shiny things. He spread them out in the sun, turned them over, lifted them one by one in his beak, dropped them, nesting on them as though they were eggs, toyed with then and gloated over them like a miser. This was his hobby, his weakness …”

I hereby declare my summer hobby will be seeking benches to perch upon as the world passes by. I feel certain to discover many stories that will “caw” at me to share them with a friend.