One crow, the same crow, marked by a gap in his left wing, appears alone in the early morning and shows me the trick he has taught himself. Without any lookout from his extended family, risking the Cooper who hunts this turf, he bobs and weaves across the lawn until he is under the caged suet. He looks up. He rises to the cage in less than a blink, effortlessly, and hangs upside down, and while swinging he strikes the cake one two three times, chunks popping and falling. He drops, eats, hops back up, repeats, a lustrous, black-suited, jokey acrobat in a crow-suit, one wing hanging slack, swinging beneath the branch but doing so with complete sincerity. If only to catch his act I will keep buying that lard until the crack of doom.
© Mike Wall
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