When I was a kid I always wished I had a pet crow. I never had one till I was 44 years old. My pet crow was named Edgar.... Edgar Allan Crow. Edgar Allan had a broken wing which he dragged behind him like a broken umbrella.
Where did I get the desire to have a pet crow? Maybe I thought to emulate my ancestral God, One-eyed Woden with his two shoulder ravens Thought and Memory. Maybe I wanted to be Long John SIlver with a crow on my shoulder instead of a parrot.Then I remembered my best friend Erick.
Erick lived across the street from me in Montreal West . He and I were thick as thieves. Best friends for three years, age 12 to 15. Erick & I loved the same green-eyed girl & never knew it... he when he was thirteen and me 6 years later. I actually proposed to her. Erick went kind of strange after that incident with his biology teacher when he was 15 & I lost touch even though he lives three hours south of me in Montana.
Our passion was birds.... the feathered kind. We spent our spare time in the swamps & woods of southern Quebec filling out our life list of birds seen. Scarlet Tanagers, Golden Eyes, Ovenbirds, Pileated Wood Peckers. We were serious. We had special vests. Gum boots. I had a cast off pair of binoculars from my father It lacked its left eye-piece. Erick had state-of-the art Zeiss. We had our field guides, The Birds of North America. Roger Tory Peterson. Erick went on to be a full fledged bird man... PhD from Princeton studying the mating habits of Lazuli Buntings who improvise songs like jazz singers to attract mates (It seems some have the jam & some don’t).
In the summer of ‘71 when he was 13 he moved onto a platform forty feet up the elm tree in his front yard. Erick had a pet crow named CORBIE He found him as a crow-let (or is it crowling) & he raised him up to adulthood. He spent all summer up on that platform with his crow & his binoculars. I had acrophobia or maybe it was just the fear of premature death & could not climb the tree. I was envious of old Erick & his crow up there in the Elm. I was desperate, as all boys of that age are, for a crow.
Then, I forgot all about Erick ‘ s crow. I even forgot about Erick.
One day when I was a cowboy I was doing a house-call at Rosie’s house. I was doing the housecall as a country doctor not as a cowboy although I was wearing cow-boy boots. In fact, I am wearing those self-same cowboy boots right now. Good and broken in. Rosie’s simple sister Evie weighed 350 pounds and was only 5 foot tall. She married Everett when he turned 70. He was 6 foot tall and weighed 97 pounds... I call it the Jack Sprat Syndrome... One day they called me into their bedroom where they were both dressed in the altogether under a very big red sheet... nothing x-rated....Evie was fairly well bed ridden due to her weight & her diabetes & her amputated foot but man that was a sight I will never forget...
Along with a collection of original Elvis Knickknacks and a stack of Wilf Carter LP’s Rose & Evie & Everett had a crow in a cage in their front parlour. A crow named Alpo. Rose saw that I was interested in her crow & she did not waste a minute. She wanted me to have him. I mean who gets an opportunity like that. A pet crow in a cage. I asked innocently enough where she got the crow. She found him on her lawn. The dogs were trying to eat him... Alpo had a broken wing. Alpo blinked his nictitating membrane, looked at me opaquely.... even hostilely & croaked once. Love at first sight. I took him home in his cage. Rose even gave me all his food. He ate dog food. ALPO.
Perhaps I should have called my wife. I am not saying the crow caused the demise of my marriage...there were other issues. He was just a kind of black beacon a sign post on the way to the end of love. I thought she would be thrilled.... out on our windy quarter section near Lundbreck. After all we once kept a sickly calf with scours in our soaker tub for three days, blow-dried him, & fed him bottled collostrum. We lived alongside a rag tag band of broilers and layers, a turkey named Henry, 3 African geese, 2 ducks (one of whom snored), 2 goats & the 2 pigs (Wilbur and Charlotte )(p.s. don't name your pigs if you intend on eating them later) 3 dogs, 4 cats, the welsh mountain pony & of course the children.
At first I think my wife got the romance of it all. I renamed him Edgar Allan... Edgar Allan Crow. It was all good at first. A black, feisty, one-wing crow in the living room. I agreed to feed him. I custom built a beautiful red cage that fit into the bay window. I painted it fire engine red to go with the jet black of the crow. For three or two or one days... all went well.
If you are planning to get yourself a pet crow there are a few things you should know. I am sure you love the sound a crow makes. It is kind of raw & wild in the distance when you hear it in the deep pine forest but it is not a very pretty sound up close all night ...all day.... no pattern at all. A caw caw caw-phony in the next room. Kind of makes you sit up stone cold awake at three in the morning. I was moved a little by Edgar’s longing to be with his posse. Whenever a crow or a magpie passed he would become enthusiastic & try his hip hop rap music on them through the window. There are a lot of crows and magpies in southern Alberta.
You should know crows do not develop dainty litter box habits. There just isn’t a need when you are one mile up with your murder... (as you know a bunch of crows is called a murder of crows). You just let loose, let the wind take care of the rest.... Mother Nature’s crop duster. Crows are not really a small bird about the size of a chicken.They generate a great deal of fertilizer. All thoughts of the crow being loose in the house disappeared that first day.
I thought to tame him. With the proper plastic black cape I could walk around with him on my shoulder. I even bought a barber shop cape. Edgar had no intention of ever being tame. His wing hung down behind him. I am not so sure if Long John Silver would have looked so cool with a gimpy crow ....what with his peg leg & all. As Patrick Henry said to the red-coats.... “give me freedom or give me death” That was Edgar’s obsession.... freedom. What a notion.
I tried to feed him choice bits of my supper.. bacon, buttery mashed potatoes, crackers. He blinked his membrane, waited quietly in the back corner of the cage till I was close. Goddam! He would bite me as hard as he could. He tried to amputate my finger. He really got into it scrunched his eyes with the effort, twisted, cawed his fool head off. I had blood blisters up & down my fingers. Never once did I get him to accept a bite. He liked my daughter though... Cecilia.. Maybe it was her red hair. She calmed him down. She fed him ALPO.
Two days after I finished his red cage it was out in the mud porch, then on the deck & the next week down in the barn. One day the door to the cage was mysteriously open. Sis & I went looking. We went up onto the bald hay quarter. We heard old Edgar. He hopped along the ground dragging his bad wing. Crowing like a banshee. Following a rolling tumbling murder of crows high up in the winter Chinook wind. He had escaped a mile from the house. He definitely did not want to be caught. When he saw us he took off like Jack the Bear. Sis threw her lime green ski jacket over him. We hustled him back to the farm, his muffled caws calling out to his clan.
Next week he escaped for good. I know there are many coyotes in southern Alberta. I imagine him up in a limber pine out of harm’s way his broken wing tucked under. All his friends the magpies & the Crows feed him tit bits. Good bye Edgar Allan Crow... I love how nothing could tame you. You were the black book end of that chapter of my life. I miss you out there in the coulees near my ranch, back when I was a cowboy. Good bye Edgar Allan Crow.
