Carrion by David Walser 25.11.2008
There was a man in our village that raised a crow. For some reason the little creature’s first lot of feathers had grown white and brittle so doubtless the parent crows or the siblings pushed it out of the nest. The man found the helpless and, by that time, very hungry reject on the ground under the tree. He took it home and with a judicious diet of worms, bugs and dog food, the new feathers grew out strong and black but it took a year for all the weak feathers to be replaced; until they were, the crow could not fly. Meanwhile, it had become so tame that it was like a real companion and the man had learnt to imitate the sound of crow talk. It seemed to him that the crow understood quite a lot of what he was saying and vice-versa. When he had been away from the house and came back, he would call for the crow and in no time at all it would come hopping and fluttering across the lawn towards him from wherever he had been exploring in the garden: either hunting for worms or chasing the bantams, which was his favourite sport. Similarly, if the crow was hungry, the man understood the strident call it made.
The crow often sat on the man’s shoulder and when it peered into his eye, the man was glad that he wore glasses, just in case the bird was attracted to the twinkle and gave a friendly peck. It would not have been anything but a friendly peck because the bird seemed quite as fond of the man as he was of the bird.
Sometimes the crow foraged inside the man’s ear. Was it the smell of wax that attracted him or just the thought that such a deep hole might contain something nice to eat? The man was just a little afraid of a friendly peck in the ear, for he had noticed that when the crow pecked a piece of meat, it was like a road drill. Mind you, he had never seen a slow motion picture of a road drill, but he imagined that the first ‘hit’ of the drill head merely scraped the surface, the second ‘hit’ made a dent and the third punctured the surface. Then the drill would delve deeper and deeper. ‘If ever he pecks’, thought the man, I must pull away before he can do any damage.’
When the crow began to fly, it lived in a cedar tree two gardens away, but the man only had to call and the bird would swoop down and strut about on the lawn, accepting tidbits and chattering away as though it were relating all the things that had happened during the day.
The crow lived for ten years and reared several families. One day the man was taking his daily walk along the river when he saw a huge gathering of crows, or rooks as they probably were, in a tall poplar tree. When he gave his ‘crow-call’ for old times’ sake, the birds fell silent and when he looked up, the sleek black shapes were motionless and attentive.
The old man, for so he was by then, had always baked his own bread, adding lots of different seeds to his dough. Next morning, he took the rest of an old loaf he had baked and when he found himself beneath the tree filled with rooks, he called again. The rooks fell silent and watched him as he broke up the loaf and threw the bits around him. He walked slowly away and when he looked back, he was just in time to see the first rook fly down to the ground. Soon all the others followed.
As the days passed and the old man shared his loaf, the rooks became quite tame and would stride about on the ground waiting for the bread, while he walked slowly towards them. There was one bird that even took the bread from his hand, and others who caught the bread in mid-air as he threw it.
One day, turning for home, he decided to take a narrow, little used path through the trees. It was in the right direction and might even get him home more quickly, but hardly had the thought occurred to him, when he found the way barred by a fallen tree. In his youth such an obstacle would have been nothing, but now he had less energy: by the time he had clambered over it, he was quite puffed and worse still, his spectacles had fallen off. He would have to scrabble about on the ground and, after a lot of effort, he found them and put them safely into his pocket. While he was heaving himself up, he felt the pain. He knew immediately what it meant. No one could avoid reading about heart attacks and he was in a way quite prepared for the moment that one of them should visit him. When he was younger, he always used to say, he couldn’t die yet because he hadn’t done his filing but now his filing was all up to date, he was no longer worried about the thought. He sat down rather heavily, his hand grasping for the tree-trunk and then he lay down. The pain got worse and a few minutes later, he died.
The rooks had by this time finished all the bread and they could see their friend nearby. Perhaps he had some more bread. The boldest rook, the one that often accepted bread from his hand, hopped over towards him. It saw none and the man made no movement. The crow hopped nearer; still no movement. The crow covered the last few inches with the sailor-like rolling gate, which will be familiar to anyone who has observed these birds. He reached the man’s face and peered at the bright eye that was staring out at him. When a rook inspects things at close quarters, he turns his head first this way and then that. Rooks have nearly all-round vision but they must see better if they turn an eye to face what they are looking at, because that is what they always do.
There was still no movement, so the big rook gave the eye a tap. No reaction, but he must have got a taste of something good, because he gave another tap, and then another until the eye popped out of the socket. A mass of rooks joined in. The big rook managed to hold on to the eye and as his mates busied themselves with the connecting tissues and muscles, he flew off and swallowed it. Soon another rook had penetrated the nice moist glistening eye-socket. After some energetic pecking, he found delicious, soft tissue, which was in fact the man’s brains.
Some time later, a passing jogger noticed a heap of excited rooks cawing and squabbling over something on the ground. He had only to go a few yards from his track in order to get a closer view. What could they be eating? It was then that he saw a shoe and the shoe was attached to a leg.
The autopsy said that so little was left of the man, the cause of death could not be known for sure, but the papers ran headlines saying that crows had attacked and killed an old man. History books of this period maintained that this was one of the first recorded cases of birds ganging up on, and attacking human beings until they killed them. Later in the 21st century, it became the norm for animals both large and small to turn against human beings: children could no longer play outside and adults hardly dared to leave their houses for exercise. Foxes ran off with babies, rats became immune to poison and attacked any living thing. If a bedroom window were left open at night, there might be a pile of clean bones in the bed by morning. Cows trampled herdsman. Elephants rampaged into villages in India and bears devastated caravan sites in America.
Of course the newspapers were quite wrong in saying this was the first fatal attack by common or garden English birds on a human being. To the rooks, the old man was just carrion.