We wanted crow friends so badly.

For each of the past three years, a different family of crows has taken up residence in the woods behind our house. They arrive in late summer and stay until spring, then they move on.

We always take it personally when they go. I’m embarrassed about how badly I think we’ve failed, when it probably has very little to do with us. They are crows, doing crow things. We haven’t finished our Cornell School of Ornithology online class on corvids yet, which I’m sure at some point will explain what, if anything, is our part in it.

What is abundantly clear is that in those first two seasons our heartfelt interest in crows morphed into something rather devotional. At least I hope so, because if not then we’re rapidly becoming the poster “pick-me”s of human/ornithological interaction.

We’ve researched what they like to eat, and what is actually good for them. We feed them well every day, and as a result do not need to set an alarm anymore, because they let us know it’s time to start doing morning things at 6:15am every day. Occasionally on the weekend they will let us sleep in, and it’s uncanny how they know when we need that break.

We originally launched a PR campaign on their behalf, which uses up a lot of our social capital in the neighborhood, which isn’t filled with other corvid enthusiasts. Not so surprising when you consider what our neighborhood is populated by: curators of immaculately manicured lawns. Some of these monoculturists don’t take very kindly to the yearly service the crows provide by attacking the emerging grubs every spring, leaving churned up patches of lawn for all to see, like a rash on flawless skin.

So now we keep the delightful interactions we have with our crows on the down-low. Our beautiful mess of a lawn however, especially during No Mow May, is on full display.

The Thaw

This winter was….a lot. It was actually a very ordinary winter by regular standards, which ha, just kidding doesn’t exist anymore. But compared to winters in the Days of Yore, it was pretty standard issue with heaps of snow and long stretches of temps well below freezing. However, since last winter was so mild, so unprecedented, so punctuated by horrifyingly powerful nor’easters that arrived during high tide and wrought record-breaking damage to the entire Maine coast, this year felt like a return to a kind of winter that if I’m being honest, I’d lost my chops for. The rigors of snow, cold, and dark coincided with the fascists and the oligarchs trying to smash and break and destroy as much as they can. And I was at the bottom of a very steep climb up to a better vista after a hysterectomy.

How macabre that the effects of climate change seemed preferable to me at times.

But hope is not a wimp. It returns whether it’s invited to or not, just as signs of spring are popping up with increasing frequency (I see you, flocks of robins on the part of the lawn not still buried in snow). Last week I actually put my boots aside and wore sneakers while I did errands without a hat, jacket, or mittens. Individually, these are not necessarily signs that winter is waning, but altogether, they are a definitive marker.

I paused to feel the sun on my face as I unloaded groceries from the back of my car, when I heard a….chortle? Trill? A power tool? I had no idea, I’d never heard anything like it before. When I looked into the trees where it was coming from, I saw one of the crows making this sound, hopping sideways on the branch it was perched on and cocking its head as if to say, “Hi! It’s me! Yes, I’m talking to you!”

I tried to mimic the sound.

I very much do not have the apparatus to do so. I was not even close.

The crow paused, and then repeated itself. I tried again. The crow demonstrated the sound again.

This happened about 6 times. I felt like I was on the receiving end of infinite avian patience.

Then I burst out laughing. Telepathy would have been more effective, but I said it in my out loud voice anyway: that I was sorry to be so pathetic at this new language (for me). I conveyed my appreciation and gratitude for its friendship. I let them know that I saw them, not just on this mild afternoon, but on all the other days when they have reached across the chasm to connect with us in all the ways they have done.

Like when they leave us little gifts on the deck where we toss out food for them.

Or when they follow me as I walk our dogs, alighting on roofs 3 or 4 houses ahead of us, again and again until we get to the end of our road and turn back. Then they fly all the way home and wait for us until they can see us approaching, cawing at full volume to announce we’ve returned safely.

Or when the resident red fox daringly came into the yard early on a bright morning a few days after my language lesson, and sounded an alarm. Never leaving the trees closest to the house, they called! and called! and called! to let us know! When I went to the window to see what was happening, the fox was fully exposed right underneath me for the briefest of moments, sniffing the air before trotting back into the woods.

Fox Medicine

Spiritually, Fox medicine centers around adaptability and agility, especially in learning new ways of communication and conception. Fox medicine encourages us to think outside beliefs that no longer serve us, to scrupulously examine our coordinated assumptions so that each unhelpful thought, like a lazily thrown bowling ball, doesn’t end up in the gutter.

As the fox returned to our yard several times during the following few days, and the crows kept up their insistent alerting to it, I had the growing realization that they weren’t just generally sounding an alarm. In fact, they were specifically alerting us to the fox’s presence.

Then later, a quick search on Youtube revealed that the trilling sound the crow had been trying to teach me was a sound crows use to affirm their bonds with other crows, and to express that connection.

At this, my heart broke open. Somehow in just a few months we had proven ourselves to this crow pair. They trusted us enough not just to live adjacent to us as over-winterers, but more so, to include themselves, and us, in a kind of togetherness.

And then, like the loud caws that wake us up every morning, a thought crashed through the sleepiness of my assumptions: maybe it’s not a different pair. Maybe it’s the same crow pair returning three years in a row.

How many times had I remarked out loud that this pair was so much more vocal than the others that had come before? That this pair was more sassy, more comfortable bringing their friends, up to 30 at a time, to roost in the tallest trees visible to us? How this year’s pair feels safe enough to remain in the trees closest to the house while we toss food to them, instead of flying away until we’re done?

What if those personality traits, that I had assumed were static, were just what happens when crows know they can trust you? What if this is what happens when kindness and caring is consistent? These are different crows only in so much as we’re getting to see what happens over time, when their guard is lowered, because it’s safer for them to do so?

That would mean it’s less important that the crows are leaving.

What’s more important is that they’re coming back.

Caw! Caw! Caw!

All of us are sensitive to what will surely become an almost constant yearning for meaning and perspective. The crows have taught me this winter that wild decency and kindness made manifest takes time. Certainly longer than I thought it would. Or wanted it to, for sure. The crows and the fox taught me that hope lives tenaciously in the what if’s. Sometimes we need to turn our assumptions over and inspect them for what no longer serves us.