A Crow Funeral

a reply to: zosimov

Despite what some might think many animals do in fact grieve for their companions. Some even hold vigils. I’m sure most animals feel just as much emotion as we do, maybe more even when compared to the sociopaths among us.

When I was a kid my neighbor friend up the street found an injured baby raven (I guess that's sort of a crow, right?) on the street by their house. She took it in their garage and kept it in a dog kennel they had. Over the course of the summer she faithfully took care of it, letting it out periodically to stretch and see if it wanted to fly. She would let it out for longer and longer each day. It would eventually just go back in the kennel on it's own.

One day she went out into her garage and the raven was gone. She went outside and it had flown up onto the garage roof. So it had recovered enough to fly. Then, strangely, after a while it flew down and went back in the kennel which was now just left open. It did this for about a week. Each day it would venture further and further. It grew into this giant raven, and it stood about 2' tall it seemed. I can remember looking at its huge shiny beak when it would fly down and hang out with us. It was totally friendly and would even let you pet it. When we were outside it was never far away. It would fly from tree to tree as we rode our bikes, always keeping us in sight.

We were too young to really know about the symbolic nature of a raven, to us it was just this cool bird. If you looked closely at him his feathers were actually a really deep purple color, not black like they appear when you see them at a distance. (I say "he", but I don't really know if it was a he, or a she, we just assumed it was a male) He was really cool too. He would play games with us also. Somewhere he found this large black button. He'd drop it on the ground near you. If you picked it up and threw it, he'd go find it and bring it back. He could play that game all day.

He hung around for 5 or 6 years. Each year he got a little more distant until one year he was pretty much gone...or so we thought. A couple years later my friend's parents were having a garage sale one day when all of a sudden some lady let out a blood curdling scream! She had walked up to examine the kennel which was for sale and this giant black raven flew down and landed right on that kennel. We didn't know for sure if it was him or not, but he stood his ground, and my friend and I could walk right up to him. He eventually flew off to a nearby tree.

They didn't sell the kennel, and as far as I knew that bird was watching out over us from the tree tops for as long as we were around.

I'll never forget that.

We have ravens in our yard this week. They are like crows on steroids.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

What a beautiful and heartwarming story!

What a lovely, respectable turnout for Crow's funeral!

I really enjoyed all the comments and think they made a worthy eulogy (Night Star-- you're right that Fcd's story is wonderful).

I definitely agree that animals have way more complexity going on than a lot of us give them credit for. Nature is so fascinating and I'm always glad when I take the time out to look more closely

Cheers, friends!

Crows are very intelligent. Maybe an old wives tale but I was told by an old timer mountain man (my father) that a murder of crows will put sentries around their rookeries for protection. If one of the sentries allows an intruder into the rookery the other crows will gang up on it and assassinate it. I watched a special on crows on PBS a good while ago. I believe the attached video is a excerpt from it. I hope you enjoy it.

Well here's a kind of sad (particularly when considering my avatar lol) update:

The corvids have left the neighborhood and seem to be shunning my house. The part that makes me kind of sad is that even the magpies which had made a home in my neighbors yard and for months now felt quite at home rooting for worms etc in my yard have vacated the premises.
I actually miss the little fellas-- we were getting on quite well till this twist in the plot! One in particular seemed to take an interest in what I was up to and would pop up on the fence right where I was working often.

Looks like I might have inadvertently made some lifelong enemies of the neighborhood crows.

Pretty fascinating insight into the ways of corvids though!

a reply to: zosimov

I saw something todsy that reminded me of this thread. And this one really seems to be a positive one for a crow that allegedly befriends a stray kitten and feeds it for eight months. reddit
The comments are truly hilarious.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

What a sweet story! It's hard not to laugh/smile when seeing the footage of those two friends. Thanks for posting this here CriticalStinker!