The Crows Were Gone This Morning

Screamy with Scruffy...or maybe, Watcher

My adorable wife's small posse of crows has just returned; they've been unaccountably missing all morning. All the crows around here were missing this morning--maybe called away by some crow convention up in the high trees in the hills hereabouts.

But now it's almost 2, and they just greeted her in their customarily raucous manner: as she returned from peace vigiling down at the ferry landing, they were throwing their weight around, squawking and pecking at small body parts and detritus in the street.

Led by Little Screamy, they've been cadging food from my generous spouse for the past four months. Originally it was the adolescent-appearing Screamy with the much larger Scruffy who appeared. After being fed in our courtyard, they'd retreat to the roof opposite, where she (we just assumed her gender) would dip her head, and spread her wings as she approached Scruffy, screeching for food. He (another gender assumption) would succumb, and jam some tidbit down her gullet.

At some time in those first weeks, Watcher appeared, mostly behaving as his/her (for some reason, we've never assigned this crow a gender) name suggests--s/he would hang back, waiting diffidently while S&S did the initial crumb cleanup, before swooping down to pick up the remains. With occasional and temporary additions, this trio has remained intact all fall, and it's still led by Screamy, who is no longer little.

Beginning not long after we first saw her, and for about six weeks, Screamy was easily identified by two small tumorous-looking growths--one beneath her left eye and the other flopping like a wattle over her beak. This was the cause of much speculation between my wife and me. She googled for info and found that Screamy was suffering from avian pox (or some such thing), that sometimes led to premature death.

Screamy, hurrying, with pox

Screamy's handicap, and her proud, though often loud and annoying, thirst for living sealed the deal between her and my sucker-for-the-underdog wife. After more than a month of affliction the tumors dropped off, but the human-avian connection remains.

K still complains about the insistent cawing that demands her attention as soon as she opens the blinds in the morning, but she always gives in, trying to scatter the crumbs so that Screamy doesn't get every single one. And Screamy would, too, if she could hold them all in her beak before one of the other two has a chance to scurry in for a wee smackerall.