A Murder of Crows

[Paddler]

From the Miscellaneous Journal:

A few days ago Jody and I went for a hike at Quail Hollow State Park. It was a hot day and we decided to walk one of the woodland trails. The mosquitoes are pretty thick in there at this time of year, but they don't make much trouble as long as you keep moving.


So we were hoofing it through the woods there and I happened to notice a couple of crows calling to each other. I decided to butt into the conversation. I took out my crow call and gave them a couple of blasts of what, in crowspeak, means "come hither". Yeepers, Ole! It seemed like crows came thither from every point on the compass. They were yelling at each other and flitting from branch to branch in the canopy and just raising cain in general. Jody and I kept walking.


After we had walked about forty yards, the crows calmed down and everything was quiet behind us. I gave them another blast of "come hither", and again, they came thither. This time there were more of them and they raised a real uproar. We walked on another forty yards.


Each time I called them, they seemed to get more excited. Then I made the hoarse squealing sound that means, "He'p me! He'p me! Snakes are eating the nestlings!" Egad, they converged on the place and were fit to be tied. They flew around in the canopy and made the branches lash back and forth, all the while yelling and carrying on fit to kill. They were fixin' to raise hell and drive a wedge under it. For a minute there, I was afraid they were going to tear the woods down and come after us.


We walked the whole woodland loop there and kept those crows following us through the trees. If someone had looked down on the woods from above, he could have followed our progress by watching that "murder" of crows agitate the tree tops. The things you see when all you've got is a crow call.


http://imgur.com/a/E7Zrw

Yours truly, ca. 1950.

MCR>
Abstractor of the Quintessence
Order of the Digital Grail