Crows and the Unknowable

Delivering a crow and a fawn to a rehab facility left me unsettled.

Listen to the radio version here.

UPDATE: I got word from Wild & Free today that the crow is doing well. Turns out it’s a fledgling—the crows in my neighborhood had their young early this year, and it wasn’t showing any of the normal marks of a fledgling.

Every morning, and sometimes once or twice during the rest of the day, I go to the backyard, whistle, and set a handful of peanuts in my two platform feeders. Any crows or Blue Jays in hearing range fly over. Most stay up in the trees, waiting until I go into the house before they drop to the feeder, but sometimes I’ve barely stepped back before one crow—I think always the same individual (without a name tag or leg band, I can’t be certain)—flies down and grabs a peanut while I’m still right there.

I’ve always loved crows, but this makes me inordinately fond of them, so I was distressed a couple of weeks ago when I noticed one spending a lot of time on the ground or perched on my fence or feeder post. I could see from its full-length tail, lack of a reddish gape or red mouth-linings, and brown rather than blue eyes that it was an adult, but I could not tell if it was a he, she, or they—many birds divulge their preferred pronouns via their plumage, but not crows, jays, or chickadees. Whichever it was, it always waited till I was pretty close before it flew off, and never gained much altitude or went far. It was drinking water in puddles and my birdbath and eating under the feeders, and its droppings looked normal. I had no idea what was wrong.

(Note: I hardly ever photograph sick or injured birds, especially ones that know me—it somehow feels like a betrayal.)

It rained all night Thursday, June 27, and the crow was soaked in the morning, so I placed it in a box—it didn’t resist. Wildwoods, our local wildlife rehab facility, was still closed, and I had to babysit until 2 pm. Fortunately, it was raining so I could safely keep the box in my car until I was done. When I drove straight to Wildwoods, the crow looked perky, but still could not fly. Holding it, I could feel how prominent its keel bone was, meaning it was badly undernourished.

Krista at Wildwoods said if they couldn’t determine a straightforward issue that they could help with, the crow would be taken to either the wildlife clinic on the Twin Cities campus or Wild & Free in Garrison, Minnesota. Since it was Friday and I wouldn’t be babysitting over the weekend, I offered to transport it, my fingers crossed that it would go to Wild & Free, where the staff turns to euthanasia only when the situation is hopeless, doing their best even when the bird is “just a crow.”

Later that afternoon, Krista called and asked if I could pick up the crow and also a fawn—she didn’t know its history except that it was suffering from neurological damage—when Wildwoods opened the next morning at 10, to transport them to Wild & Free. Garrison is on Mille Lacs Lake, about 115 miles from Duluth, down I-35 and then on 2-lane roads through scenic forests and farm country.

Both the deer and the crow were very quiet for the first hour and a half even after I had to brake hard when a doe and fawn jumped out of a hidden ditch straight into my driving lane—it would have been as ironic as it would have been terrible had I hit them.

About a half hour before I made it to Garrison, the little fawn apparently got hungry and started bleating a quiet but insistent Maaaaa! every 10 seconds or so for the final half hour of the drive. My maternal instinct is a little too strong for me to have been able to ignore this. It had been fed just before we left, so the situation was hardly dire, but suddenly, getting there felt urgent. I felt unadulterated relief to relinquish it to Wild & Free.

On the other hand, I felt very sad bidding the crow farewell. I filled out the online “Contact Us” form requesting an update, and have since emailed them, but rehab facilities stretch their limited resources beyond capacity just to do all the work involved in caring for wild creatures, especially during baby critter season. Keeping inquisitive birdwatchers in the loop must be given a much lower priority.

People often say “no news is good news,” but no. No news is, literally, no news, making it neither good nor bad. Unfortunately, our poor human brains have trouble dealing with uncertainty. My crow either survived or didn’t, just as Schrödinger's cat is either alive or dead in that box.

My local crows, who had much closer personal relationships with the crow than I did, stayed away from my yard for a few days while it was grounded, perhaps imposing a crow-style quarantine just in case what was wrong was contagious. They started coming in force again this week, dealing with the uncertainty of what became of their friend with a graceful acceptance. It’s not at all that they’ve forgotten the poor thing—when a crow is removed from an area and then later returned, local crows immediately recognize and accept it back into their little social group.

We humans lack crows’ grace to deal with life as it unfolds. Crows never waste their time obsessing over news that is 90 percent speculation about what may or may not happen. They keep abreast of what is certain, doing their best to fend off real and immediate dangers while wisely making what provisions they can against an unknowable future. Whether I’m wondering whether this crow survived, fretting about whether and when my cancer will recur, or fighting a political agenda that would destroy too many elements of the environment we all depend on, my neighborhood crows have a lot to teach me. Even as they warn about and fight off predators and other urgent threats while hoarding away food they might need come winter, they maintain a Zen-like acceptance of life’s mysteries. I wish I could be more like them.