CROWS

                                                                     CROWS     
                                                              KARL WALLACE

         When I first began to understand crow language correctly, there was a little incident that
happened across the street in a log house that sits on the rise just above the Weber River. The loghouse has been empty ever since I can remember. It has an outhouse, maybe a ghost, a  plank roof, one big room (no more), no ceiling, and nothing between the rafters and the floor.  From the beginning beginning the cabin had quirks. Like an outhouse it had a three-seater with a mini-hole at the center for a child’s potty.  Another quirk is a knot hole in the center of the roof.  You can dangle a walnut down in it and scare the hell out of guests.                                           

     Well, one fine Sunday morning I was out sunnin in my front yard by the Weber River with my cat, Cry Baby (named her after my first wife). I was lookin’ at the orange Wasatch Mountains, takin’ in the sun and listenin’ to the leaves rustling lonely in the trees, thinkin’ of my childhood home yonder in Denver. I hadn’t heard from any kin in seven years.” Then suddenly a crow by the name of Craig Carson came flying by, right out of the blue. He lit on the abandoned house and says,

      “Hello, I reckon I’ve struck something.”     

      When he spoke, the walnut dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof but he didn’t care, his mind was on the thing he had just seen, a knot-hole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side, he shut one eye and put the other one to the hole like a cross-eyed raccoon looking down a chimney. Then he glanced up with bright eyes, gave a wink or two, and gave his wings a kind of little-flutter which means satisfaction in crow language and said,

      “It looks like a knot-hole, it lays like a knot-hole, it must be a knot-hole.”

      Then he cocked his head down and took another look, he glances up, perfectly joyful. He walks around the knot-hole three times to the left with one eye on the hole, then flapped his wings, glided down to the ground picked up the walnut and flew back to the knot-hole and dropped the walnut in. Then, all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening countenance and had the queerest look of surprise took his face why he says,

     “ I didn’t hear that walnut hit the ground!”

       He cocked his eye again at the hole and took another look, and scratched the back of his head
With his right foot, and says,

     “Well, it’s too much for me. That’s for certain, It must be a mighty long hole. However, I haven’t got any time to waste, I’ll go fetch another walnut so as to see what’s what.”

        He again dropped a walnut in and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what became of it, but he was too late. He held his eye there as much as five minutes, then raised up and sighted at the sky again, and says,

      “Darn, I don’t seem to understand this thing, no how, but I'll try her again.”

         He fetched another walnut, and did his level best to see what become of it, but he couldn’t.

       “Well,” he said, “I’ve never seen a hole like this one. It must be a new kind. His feelings began to get the best of him and he broke loose, with cussen and stomped about on the roof. When he finally settled down and near had control of himself, he walks up to the hole and peers in again for just a minute.

       “Well, you’re a long hole, a deep hole, a singular hole all together. I’ve started in to fill you and I’ll be dammed if I don’t fill you, if it takes me a hundred years.”  With that said, away he went for more walnuts. You never seen a bird work like that, he laid into it like an illegal Mexican with a family to support back home. He throwed black walnuts in for three whole hours or more. Never even stopped for lunch or took a look, he'd just hove’em in and go for more.

      At last, he couldn’t flop his wings. He was all tuckered out as he slid off the roof on his back, exhausted he fell to the ground, sweating like a sun-burnt midget koala bear in the out-back. Hebarely had enough strength to lean his back against the log house. Then he says,

     “I’m going to need some help.”

      Just then another crow was going by, Stan Jacobson. He noticed Craig lying there half conscious.
Stan landed and asked if he needed a doctor. The sufferer told the whole circumstance.

     “There yonder’s the hole, and if you don’t believe me, go and look for yourself.”

        So Stan flew up and looked in the knot hole then comes back and asks,

       “How many did you say you put in there Craig?”

        “Not less than two tons”

         Stan went and looked again. He couldn’t make it out either so he gave a few loud caws and five more crows came. They all stood around in a circle, and Craig told the story again. Then they discussed it using Robert's Rules of Order, and they got off as many inconsistent opinions as an average crowd of Senatorial incumbents.

       “Afterwards they cawed in more crows until soon the whole sky was black. There must have
been 10,000 of them brawling, jawing, disputing, cussing, and makin my yard a mess besides. Every
crow put its eye to the hole and delivers a more knuckleheaded opinion than the crow that came
before him.  For two whole days,they dropped walnuts in the knot hole trying to fill it but had no
success. At last, one old wise crow by the name of Bill Arnold started snooping around. The door was
standing a crack open and he happened to light on the rusty door knob. He took a look in.

     Of course, that solved the sixty-four dollar question right then and there.

      Come here, Bill says, come here everybody.”

      They all came swooping down, and as each fellow lit around the door they took a glance at the half-filled room of walnuts. The whole absurdity hit home. Bill fell over backward almost
 suffocating with laughter and the crow next to him too.

     There’s no sense in saying a crow doesn’t have a sense of humor, or crows aren’t on an equal
level to us squash. They just don't go to church.

      Two weeks later, while every one was still funin, down the street came a neihborhood butter
cup squash walking her mini dog. She took a look inside, and said “this isn’t funny.” Bye and bye, all the crows agreed and flew back to Denver or from whence they came, except the local crows.

To read more Karl Wallace stories go to:                karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com