Women Who Feed Crows

Women Who Feed Crows
I am going to put some entries in from my trips across the West.  Today's entry happened yesterday, but I may put some older ones in too.  I'm visiting friends in the Northwest. 

2013  7-13  

            I walked down to the elementary school playground, where I could let Rex off lead.  Usually he makes one circuit of the playground and then goes back to the gate.  If there is a dog to play with we might go two.  He uses the bathroom and sniffs around the base of the building. Sometimes, like yesterday, he snuffles in the grass and finds something to eat.

            As we walked along the play equipment, a raven croaked at us furiously from the top of the swing set.  I raised my phone to take his picture, which seemed to alarm him further.  He flapped into a tree, continuing his calls.  Another raven joined him. 

            On the other side of the chain link fence, an older woman was kneeling to dig in her garden.  Her small dog stretched onto the fence and barked.  The woman looked up from her lettuce.  “The crows are sure fussing today.”

            I showed her my i phone.  “It’s black and small.  Maybe they think I’ve got a dead raven.”

            She looked doubtful.

            “My dog?”

            “I don’t think so.”   She snapped a lettuce leaf into her basket and added,  “I see them all the time.  They come to my bird feeder.”

            Rex trotted up the handicapped ramp to the school to sniff the entrance, and we continued around the playground.  A woman in a kerchief was sitting at the table on the far side of the playing field.  She didn’t have a dog, but a raven stood near her on the sidewalk.  As we neared, she suddenly stood and, stepping to a section of the grass by the walkway, spread her arms as if blocking passage.  The raven flew up and away.

            Rex ran to her and began snatching something from the grass.  It was the same area he’d found something to eat the day before.  “Go, go!” she shouted at him.  I hurried over.

            “I feed the raven,” she said, as I hauled Rex by his collar.  “Meat in the grass.” Her wide Slavic face was distressed.  “Dog no eat.”

            I fought to clip Rex’s lead. “The ravens?  You feed the ravens meat?”

            She gave a sharp nod.  “Mama ravens need meat for babies.”

            No wonder they’d been fussing, I thought as we left.  Perhaps they had been calling each other to the feast--but they certainly had been warning each other about that interloper dog who gobbled bits they hadn’t found.