An Unkindness of Crows

Flash Fiction

An unkindness of crows! This must be the second crassest misnomer. (The first is calling earth dirt).

When I was in Nigeria, crows regularly landed on my spacious grounds, and made such a racket that I took great dislike to them.

One day I was in my kitchen cooking when I heard knocking at the door. I opened it to an unkindness of crows, in a great state of excitement. I shooed them away and went back to my cooking, but the knocking persisted. I realised that my feathery visitors wanted me to see something. I came out, and the twenty or so little chaps hopped along towards a bush, where another of their members had keeled over and was lying there helpless, trying but failing to move its wing. And all of a sudden, there was a chorus of entreaties_ or was it accusations?_ flung at me, many of them jumping about menacingly. It was clear that I was meant to do something. Wounded horses needed shooting, but what does one do about a crow with a damaged wing?

I had made a little sand pit in my veranda for my little boys, who were now away, and thought that I could take the wounded creature there until I found a way of handling the situation. I settled him in the pit, put out a few pieces of bread and some water in a saucer, with no idea what to do next. The excitable unkindness seemed pacified and left me in peace. But I checked that at any given moment, there were two, sometimes three of their numbers keeping a vigil over the victim. Next morning I found a couple of worms in the sandpit. Was it something the others had brought?

It took the hurt little fellow three days to recover. On the fourth morning, it had disappeared.

A few days later, I began seeing coloured pieces of plastic all over my grounds. At first I did not understand their provenance, but all was revealed a few days later when I saw a small flock of my erstwhile visitors landing outside my verandah, each with a coloured piece in its beak and deposit it there.