| Sunny Side Up July23, 2003 �2003, Kathleen Gibson Early-birds, old crows, and God's timing Early morning air encourages the best prayer, the clearest reflection. So when I woke before five last Saturday morning, I pulled on my jeans and walked the alleys on the outskirts of town. Most households are silent at that time of day. No music slips through screens. Hammocks and children's swings shift idly in the breeze, as though ghosts rest there. Back gates are closed, gardens empty of gardeners. But by five a.m. the birds have been up for hours. Song and throbbing wings surrounded me. Martens dodged in and out of their condos. Young wrens practiced their scolds, and crows criss-crossed the sky in dark patterns, warning� warning. POP! The gunshot shattered my contemplative frame of mind. Leaves in the willow beside me fluttered nervously in its wake. I froze, not sure whether to duck, run, or hit the ground. Alive, but uncertain for how long. A car stopped across the highway. A man in a florescent vest got out, crossed, and walked toward me. Then I remembered. As I'd left home, I'd heard gunshots in the distance. Our city is exterminating the excess crow population, and I'd winced for the black-winged creatures now fleeing for their lives. Just my luck to encounter one of their hunters. I stepped out from behind the rows of willows that had hidden me from his view. I don't know who was more shaken--me or he, at the sight of me. "Are you okay?" he asked. "No, I'm dead." (Well, you try and come up with something witty and original the next time you're shot at!) That didn't seem to set him much at ease, so I tried again. "I'm okay, but you nearly gave me a heart attack. Did you get the crow?" "Oh, yeah. Usually do." A sorrowful bundle of black feathers dangled from his left hand. "But I really didn't see you there," he said, apologizing. The man was doing his job after all. I forgave him, but my curiosity was piqued. "What would have happened if you had hit me?" In reassuring detail he explained his ammunition. Multiple small grains of shot, none larger than a grain of coarse salt. "It would sting, but it wouldn't kill 'ya." We chatted a while. Eliminating extra crows raises the songbird population, he said. And no, they don't test the eliminated crows for West Nile--it's pretty clear what they expired of. Then I carried on down the alley. But the experience had been a bit off-putting, and I couldn't enter again the sacred soul-space I'd been in before meeting the crow hunter. I'm thinking I likely spoiled his concentration too. And I wonder what story he's telling about the troublesome early-bird out walking when she ought to have been sleeping. The one he missed, thank God. Ah, it'll take a peck more than a load of buckshot to kill this old crow. I'm here till God says 'Time's up'-and not a millisecond sooner. I'm not eager-but I'm ready. You can respond to these words at [email protected] |
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