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Recounting Crows
Recounting Crows
For three days now, from the safety of my window, I’ve been watching a crow eat
a dead rat across the street. First, the bird pecks, pecks, pecks, like a woodpecker, its
chiseled beak digging into the rodent’s flesh. Eventually, satisfied with the frontal
extraction, the crow lifts the rat by its tail, shakes it a few times, then turns it front to
back, the way you and I might when roasting a leg of lamb.
What I should do, I know, is grab a shovel, scoop up the corpse and toss it in the
trash. After all, this is a dead rat—probably diseased—in front of my neighbor’s house,
no less. But during the day, when the cars have taken their owners to work, when the
school buses have swept away the noisy children, I find myself drawn back to my
window, transfixed at the sight of this crow and its relentless determination. I stand
watching. And wondering. Why, obvious Washington D.C. metaphor not withstanding,
Like most suburbanites, I am not particularly fond of crows. They are revered in
Mexican folklore, and protected under the U.S. Migratory Bird Act of 1960, but they are
also urban pests; they dominate the parks and skies in my neighborhood, raid nests, and
chase off the more delicate songbirds. Now, with the arrival of West Nile Virus, the crows
are also principal disease vectors. They may be resourceful, adapting to human
populations to take advantage of the plentiful shelter and food supply, but I find it
difficult to see anything positive about these noisy, dumpster diving birds who will make
that from the environs of my suburban neighborhood, I can spot pileated woodpeckers
tapping on trees, nesting mallard ducks, an occasional heron making its home in the
nearby creek. Even the squirrels, ubiquitous pests that they are, can sometimes be cute:
with those big heads and funny little upright postures they use for eating, it’s hard not to
What could be more unpalatable than a crow picking apart a rat, though? From a
distance, other scavengers are easy to admire—the hyenas and vultures, waiting for the
zebra spoils on the African Savannah. Or viewed from the lens of a microscope, the tiny
detritus feeders such as bacteria and fungi, laboring to break down mounds of leaf litter
But as I watch the rat start to disappear, piece by piece, I realize this crow is no
different. It’s just ugly. And urban. And in my front yard. Perhaps I have fallen into the
suburbanite trap of wanting to pick and choose my neighbors: yes, thank you, we’ll take a
single family home next door, three woodpeckers and a cardinal, but hold the noisy
Nature of course, doesn’t work this way, and as the crow finishes off the rat, I
understand what has pulled me here: it’s not as romantic as the heron taking flight with its
powerful wings, as thrilling as the sound of the woodpecker drilling through bark for
insects, but this interaction, in its visceral hideousness, is the same: nature, urban or wild,
have scattered on their weekly raid, I cross the street and check: not a trace of the rat is
left. Not even the tail, which I imagine must have been pretty tough to peck through. I ask
my neighbors—no one has touched the rodent. I conclude that it must have been the
crow. Down to the last bite. A thankless job, no doubt, but, in the natural order of things,