Counting Crows
Puget Sound has a great deal of crows. This is, of course, a gross understatement, as I cannot quite find a way to express the magnitude of the flocks without lapsing into hyperbole (that isn't actually hyperbole). If you live here, you already know what I mean. Here, the crows have driven out the ravens, set up a permanent business harassing the raptors (many of which are publicly percieved to be more noble, but aren't), spent untold hours entertaining the scholars, and generally carved out quite a nice life for themselves.
This morning when I stepped outside for the paper, the crows were already up. Three had strung themselves along the power lines like jagged black beads. I thought of the song, of the rhyme about counting crows. Three for... For what? I didn't know.
I went back in for my camera, not the digital one with its technological frills and disappointing limitations, but the old black clunky thing with the overly phallic lens, the one I love. I sat on the damp porch and photographed the crows. They didn't seem to mind. When the roll ran out (another forgotten advantage of film--you can't just sit there endlessly clicking off shots like an automaton but must appreciate your limits and consider each frame), I set the camera aside to sit with the crows for a while.
They were getting ready for their commute. It's apparently uncommon knowledge that crows, or at least Puget Sound crows, have this in common with us. Every morning the families gather, patching themselves into larger groups, and then go to work. They seem to travel for quite a distance, moving from the woods to the city centers, going to their jobs at fast food dumpsters, parking lots, the sides of roads, all sites to be scrubbed clean of forage before they regroup and return home in great cawing masses. If you stand quietly in the evening, you can hear the flocks as they pass above your house, their wings rustling and swirling like water over stones.
I thought of Roald Dahl and about how his father insisted that his mother, when pregnant with him and each of his siblings, go on Walks of Great Beauty to theoretically teach the developing fetus to appreciate such things. I did something similar (although arguably a bit more futile and a damn sight more depressing) the morning of Better Embryo's beta. Having watched the lines grow fainter all week, I knew the numbers would be bad, would indicate a dead or dying embryo. Until the phone call confirmed it, however, I decided that Better Embryo wasn't quite gone yet. I still had a few hours, so I walked along the water, naming the flowers and trees, identifying the birds and turtles, trying to absorb as much Great Beauty as I possibly could in the limited time we had left. It was the only thing I had left to give Better Embryo, I theorized.
This morning I wondered if Fitz-Hume and Milbarge would appreciate crows, if in fact they lived. I wondered what three crows meant in the rhyme, or if I should recalculate based on the number now amassed on the neighbor's roof, or the small crowd that had gathered to watch a squirrel dash to the top of a telephone pole across the street. I watched them, watching it, and became invisible to them. They would swoop low over my head, punching stark feathery holes in the sky, treating me to that unearthly whispering rustle of theirs, and seem as oblivious to my presence as I currently am to Fitz-Hume and Millbarge's.
It seems almost impossible to believe that there are two fetuses somewhere in my body (although if you saw me, you'd probably be able to make a pretty good guess as to where based on my rather alarming and sudden bulk). You'd think I'd notice when Millbarge started auditioning for the Rockettes, but I can't feel a thing. I know they're in there. I've been shown pictures and video, listened to incontrovertible evidence of their beating hearts, but it seems odd that I can't feel something of such magnitude.
I certainly feel different. I have become quite ungainly and ponderous, and constantly hungry. I pack a full lunchbox just to go shopping and constantly snack between meals. Hell, I eat entire meals between mid-meal snacks. I now have this in common with the crows by the side of the road, this constant search for food. I have become ravenous, a word that oddly has no connection to ravens.
I hardly feel pregnant, although I suspect that has something to do with the self protective denial employed by those whose para numbers are so grossly unbalanced by their gravida numbers. I can't help but think if I actually get to the point of birth and see one or more live babies, I'll be as startled by them as if they'd unexpectedly fallen from the sky.
