The legend of the fallen
Ever seen a horde of crows encircling just one woman on the street? I did. Yesterday. It was a scene straight out of a Hitchcock film. The only difference was these crows weren’t keen on hurting her. They maintained a respectable distance. Maybe they knew that the lady in question is deranged and somebody who lives on the footpath — fending for herself. So in a way, she was a lot like them. But they didn’t like what they saw. This woman in tattered clothes and with an unwashed face was holding a dead crow by its neck in her left hand and a small stone in her right; tapping the dead bird’s head with it and laughing to herself. The crows may have nothing against human food but they don’t like human contact. What ensued last afternoon was a demonstration of what happens when one of their kind is desecrated in public. They show concern. And how. Cacophony is too timid a word to describe the noise they created. Not sure what happened to that electrocuted crow in the end but am yet to witness a similar reaction in humans for the death of a complete stranger.