They are hanging around on corners, on the tops of snow banks, in parking lots, puffed up, leaning over and cawing, in groups, looking around, looking at each other, looking at you.
The winter weather is defining itself in a standard definition--grey, sidewalks slicked with ice, forty inches of snow--a record--already this year. Walking the dogs is like being enlisted in a physical comedy training school. Might as well as walk on the frozen lakes with plastic blade covers on your ice skates. I stay inside instead eating the sugar that's accumulated in different forms from the holidays: truffles, fudge, cookies, caramels, chocolate bon bons and bars.
It's not even the dregs of winter yet, when one would expect the crows to gang up due to boredom or sheer crankiness from a season gone on too long. It's barely winter, the solstice just last week.
Ah, it's snowing again. A fine, sideways recipe. The feral, tough band of house sparrows is fighting over the pile of sunflower seed husks under the feeder. A female cardinal holds pole position above them at the main seed dispenser.
As I type, Bug is regurgitating while gently grabbing the pinky of my right hand in his beak. He loves me, thinks I need wooing and/or dinner. He lost a feather on my keyboard, a greyish-green chest feather. Then he presses his forehead into the desk once. He clicks his beak along with the sound of the typing keys. He's a mystery.
Mostly, he's looking for something to do, like those crows. Eat a spine of a poetry collection? Why not. Fly to his paper bag full of magazines? Sure. He's quietly crrrr-ing in response to something Jonesy is fixing in the bathroom--it sounds awful, like sawing metal. My teeth hurt.
I bet the Bug would like a neck cuddle but I got a new hoodie sweatshirt for x-mas. He ate holes in the last one, ate the hood ties, and he has a tendency to poop on your shoulder. I am going to try to keep this new one pristine as long as possible, which means, of course, it's doomed.
He and I have not had such a good week together. I was sick on the weekend, unable to monitor his goings-on, so he had to be in his cage, so that I could sleep unmolested, not fretting the damage he was inflicting upon the house while unsupervised. He screams, of course, if he in his cage if he hears you home. Upstairs in bed, I slept, the dogs slept, so he was quiet. Maybe he was napping, too. When Jonesy got home, the yelling started, and she let him out, so he was quiet again.
I had been keeping him off me since he bit me on the chin the week before. I felt like it was unprovoked, but I probably just missed the cues. With Jonesy, they're pals, they're goofy, full of colorful stories and braggery.
A bite, then the crrkk crrkk with the cute head bob. All I am going to say is we have conditioned each other's behaviors. If a bite gets you an operatic response and you love drama, then you know what, a bite's what you get. Maybe if I had a crow, I wouldn't get nailed as often.
I would need to clarify this with my phylogeny expert, John, but I am guessing that crows and parrots aren't that close in relation, despite their tendency for intelligence, and therefore, easily roused boredom. (I am such a dork and went upstairs just now to see if I could find one of those family trees of birds--who's branching off whom & when sort of thing. In my five ornithology books, nothing, though I found in the aptly titled Ornithology mesmerizing drawings, like the flight pattern of a hovering hummingbird, or the muscles of the syrinx, the vocal instrument of Aves).
Bug is preening himself next to my laptop. I do not want him on the desk but he keeps insisting, scuttling behind the screen, checking out pieces of paper, the drapes, pens with his beak until I make him stop with an ahem! He looks tired, scritching his neck with one of his feet, his head turned in pleasure, his eyes shutting. He's fluffed up like a baby, and we love the smallness, defenseless postures of the young. When I ask him to step up, however, he leans in to bite me, and then bobs his head. So cute, so true, our pattern of to and fro. He wants something to do. He might as well as be a crow.
No comments:
Post a Comment