Alone he sat...

Though I live in a city, I love to have as much green around us as possible within the limitations posed by city dwelling. I would say I have succeeded moderately (I posted some pictures showing the greenery around my house in a recent blog post).

The things this green cover brings to your house are quite something. We have regular visits by Peacocks, Peahens, Squirrels, Snakes, Rats, Woodpeckers, Kingfishers, Sparrows, Honey suckers, honey bees, dragon flies, Fruit Bats, Cuckoos, Crows, so many other birdies whose names we don't know yet, cats, insects, Praying Mantis, Blanket worms, centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, Lizards, ants, maggots, earthworms (enough?!)...inside our compound and occasionally inside our kitchen too (the most recent visitor was a 'little-finger thin' viper that slid into a cozy corner inside our kitchen cupboard... the same fellow who sent this visitor also sent us a saviour snake catcher by design or by accident who did the needful without giving us frights).

I am digressing...let me get back to the crow of the topic, ahem, core of the topic!

Yesterday when I came home for lunch I noticed this fella, an Indian Jungle Crow with shiny head. It was a burly one and hence I address this crow in this post as a 'He' and name him 'Blackie', ok?

Blackie

He was sitting on a water filled bowl, not drinking, not doing nothing. 

My conditioned brain immediately spat out these possibilities:

1. An ancestor from Nether world has decided to visit us today.

2. Crow sighting is normally followed by people visiting the place. So maybe we are gonna get some visitors (relatives that is).

3. A thirsty crow thinking what to do as the proverbial pebbles are not needed to raise the water level (the bowl was brimming, you see?)

I quickly left after lunch not bothering to check on Blackie. When I returned late in the night, there he was, sitting in the same posture, without even moving when I crossed by.

Then another possibility popped up in my mind...

'Maybe this fella had a fight with his mate and was chucked out of their nest. That is why he is staying put here way beyond their nesting time'.

After dinner, it was time for 'lights out' and so I went to lock the main gate and turned around...only to be scared the bejesus out of me by this guy...just by being there in the same place in the same pose!

I thought 'Blackie seems to have some serious issues. Let us catch up with him in the morning with a cup of coffee and try to get into crow speak to establish a conversation with him'. Seriously! 

So I slept.

When I stepped out this morning with a steaming coffee in my hand, I could not find Blackie. I went near the place where he was sitting thru the previous night and noticed that he was lying in the soil amidst some plants, unbreathing...

I quickly called up my wife to show her Blackie. Her first reaction was 'Oh no, another one goes. Are we running a Mukti Niwas???'.

She had her reasons. Since our house is a little bit greener than the neighbourhood, we have a disproportionately higher non-human visitors as I mentioned earlier and some of these visitors breath their last here by choice or otherwise at regular interval (a squirrel here, a rat there, you get it?) and occasionally they would have chosen our water tank / water storage sump to breath their last and we would have known about their deed only when the water we rinse our mouth with started smelling...did I ever say she overreacted?!

Anyway, we decided to give Blackie a decent send off, dug up a pit big enough to hold him, put him in the pit, kept some flowers on top of him, closed the pit and kept a stone on top. Well, this is not a tombstone but what I would call a 'dignity stone' as otherwise, stray dogs would dig up the pit and you can imagine what they would do with the finding...

So here we are, just going about burying dead visitors with the same equanimity with which we are growing plants around us. The place where Blackie sat through last evening and night is empty now...

I know this shall pass. 

I have these lingering questions though; 'Why was Blackie alone?' 'What happened to his clan who would have usually spotted him dead and cried the town with Kaaaaw Kaaaaw even before any of us would have spotted him?'

I used the new age wizard, Google, which came up with some interesting findings and a flawed conclusion in an enjoyable book with the tile 'Zoologies: On animals and the Human Spirit' (this title and me finding it were pure coincidence!) by Allison Hawthorne Deming.

Here are the snippets (I use the screen shots from the book):

Crows can make a hook and use it too!

Crows waiting on zebra cross - they r onto something!

Care takers par excellence!

The conclusion about crows in the book is that they never die alone. Well, Blackie sat alone and died as I watched...maybe to prove the research wrong. 

Or...maybe... he was the Jonathan Livingston Crowgull!  

Go figure!