The clever crow Premium

The bird with a limp would wait for bits of food on my porch and would return the favour in the form of material rewards, even costly ones at times

Garth C. Clifford, author at World Birds.com, in his essay How to Befriend Crows? wrote, “Inquisitive, clever, and charmingly curious, crows are one of the rare bird species not only to recognise humans but [to] form relationships with them.” I also heard that if a crow begins to like you, it will try to woo you not only by appearing before you time and again but also by fetching and dropping material rewards like a rusted nail or a safety pin or a smooth pebble or a shirt button or even stolen bowls, spoons etc.

A few years ago, I had a good bonhomie with a crow. It never failed to visit our house early in the morning. I could easily tell the particular crow from the others as it had a limp. One of its claws was severed for some reason unknown to me. However, the deformity made it quite difficult for the crow to snatch food from other crows. This made me empathetic to that crow.

It was clever enough to understand my fondness for it. Therefore, when the remaining crows and birds maintained a safe distance from me while picking up scraps of food, that disabled ravine dared to approach me to receive food. If I delayed to arrange food, it would perch on the lower branches of the mango tree in our garden and caw repeatedly for my attention. If that failed to get my attention, the bird would grow impatient and dart on the floor of the front verandah. It would limp up and down until I threw something on the porch.

But the crow was perhaps unaware of the fact that I hardly liked it on every occasion. What was most disgusting was that it would sometimes carry filthy things including the innards of a dead mouse, frog or fish to relish them on our porch. Besides, the big plastic semi-flat water pot placed near the well was its bathtub. Very often than not, the maid, to her utter annoyance, had to empty the tub to wash and draw fresh water from the well to replenish it for household purposes.

Despite all these, I never thought of chasing the poor crow away from our house. I could easily have done so as I possessed a pair of catapults to frighten troops of monkeys.

But one incident ingrained in me the belief that the crow was fond of me. One morning, I noticed that the crow was hopping on the porch with something in its beak. When I turned my attention, I realised that it was a red cord looped into a small yellow amulet that was dangling. The crow just placed it on the cemented floor and flew away. It behaved as if it had just arrived for that purpose. To my utter astonishment, I saw that the amulet was made of gold.

Later I returned it to the owner when I came to know that the amulet was tied in the hand of a toddler living next door. The knot of the cord had somehow come loose from the boy’s arm and fell on the ground. The crow picked it up and gifted it to me. When I was a schoolboy, I, like others, read the story of the golden goose. But I am perhaps the only person who made friends with a golden crow.

nandi.budha@gmail.com