The Urban Jungle

Photo courtesy Flickr

The morning of April 20, crows woke me up before dawn. In thirty years in this house, I had never heard them call out when it was dark. The racket was so unusual, I noted the time and date.

Later that morning, local news mentioned that the space shuttle’s last flight had passed overhead in an unusual reentry pattern. I think the crows were responding to unprecedented sounds in the atmosphere. They function as “jungle fowl” on the block, announcing arrivals that are out of the ordinary. Usually, the arrivals are pedestrian.

I mentioned the crows yesterday to a neighbor who observed that when the tsunami hit Indonesia, birds and animals had already been fleeing inland for half an hour.

Ella Clark's Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest lays out the tribes' way of relating to animals. During my babysitting years, I carried this book to every household, and it never failed to captivate the children as it had captivated me.

-30-