Unkindness

This piece was written for the second “Night of the Radish” — the theme was crows.  I decided to challenge myself to write something serious.  Don’t look for a punch line.

In the first frozen hours of the morning, the stark white stillness was shattered by an unkindness of ravens.   It was not a family, nor was it a flock.  There is a reason they refer to a group of ravens as “unkindness”.  They have earned that name because that is what they are.  That is what I saw.

The bag of seed scattered along my garden walls and heaped atop the birdbath was buried beneath a foot of fresh powder.  The world was still and silent and brutal.  That is when they came.  First one, then ten, and soon there were more than I could count.  They were each a foot and a half tall with glassy eyes, steel sharp claws and black anvil beaks.

They plunged themselves headfirst into the fluff, disappearing completely for a moment then resurfacing with their bounty.  The pristine landscape was soon littered with tiny specks of seed as black as the birds themselves.   The once smooth velvet blanket of snow was scratched and dented and devoured.

Newcomers fought for access to the piles exposed by the work of the early arrivals.  Wings flapped, throats screeched and claws slashed in a mad frenzy for domination.  It was primitive and violent and most certainly unkind.

I was shaken and did not care to watch them for long, but I could not help but be awed by their instinct to survive.

I had never seen birds like that near our house.  We were accustomed to sparrows, finch, robins and woodpeckers.  Hawks would soar high above the tree canopy and wild turkeys might waddle through on occasion.  But crows of this sort had no reason to visit our oak forest — not until that morning.  They had not come two days earlier when the seeds were first laid out fresh, exposed and easy to reach.   It was only on this desperate day, when there was no other sign of life in the woods that they appeared.

When they came, they did not hesitate.  It was as if an invisible beacon had called them to this specific location for the singular purpose of uncovering the life sustaining treasure hidden deep beneath the snow.  There was no easy explanation for how they found their way here or how they knew precisely where to look when they arrived.  They just did.

I admired and feared them at once.  It was eminently clear why so many ancient cultures revered them as gods.   I was relieved when they left.

Later in the day, when the sun finally broke through, I watched with joy as a flock of scarlet red cardinals brightened a tree in the same garden space that had been so darkly ravaged just hours before.  These regal birds delighted me.  Their silky red plumage begged admiration and their manners were reminiscent of a royal court.   Unlike the savage ravens, the sophisticated cardinals took turns feeding.  One or two would perch and eat and then fly back to the tree, allowing time and space for others to take their fair share.   They seemed noble and decent.

But as I watched, I wondered how those lovely, polite little birds would have fared on such a stark day had the shrewd and brutal fowl I watched earlier not fought so hard to unearth the seed that these more refined birds could now enjoy without a struggle.

It saddened me to know that the peace, beauty and civility of the afternoon would not have been possible without the unkindness of the early hours.