You can’t keep them down on the farm. That’s what I hear.
But it’s sad, when you’ve put your heart and soul and a hundred pounds of peanuts into a person, and then they grow up and leave. You need to let them go, but you’ll aways wonder about them. This is the price of a life done right: you’re destined to be sad sometimes. If you’re not, then you never gained the joy of caring.
So I no sooner had Booboo the crow eating out of my hand, if reluctantly, and only twice, but he goes away. And not just him, but his whole family. I didn’t even notice at first. I was busy, I came and went, and if Booboo wasn’t right there for his peanut, well, maybe he was hanging out in a tall tree looking the other direction. He was pretty regular. In fact, when my critique group convened at my house, it wasn’t unusual for one of my friends to glance up and say “Your crow’s out front,” and I’d check out the window, and sure enough—everything got put on hold till I flang out a peanut.
Booboo also walked with me. Yes, he walked with me because I probably had a peanut in my pocket, but still. You feel kinda special when you have a crow for a walking companion. You learn to strut and swagger.
Thing is, Booboo isn’t the only one missing. Booboo was one of a family of four, and I haven’t seen any of them in a couple months. And I’ve had at least ten years to notice that the same family hangs out in the same trees and dunks their rats and sandwiches in the same bird baths (mine).
I’ve had my heart broken before. Our best neighbors up and left for greener pastures, or something, forty years ago, and it still hurts. They went on to (collectively) plant vineyards, raise emus, trout, and sturgeon, become judges and chefs and pilots, and gallivant with grizzly bears on remote icy ponds. They had adventures.
I don’t begrudge them any of it. But couldn’t they have had just as good a time without all the traipsiness? Why yes they could have. They could have read books. That’s what it says on all the posters in the library: a book transports you to worlds unknown. I’ll just add that it probably has to be really well written to evoke our friends’ lived experience, but still.
You never saw us gallivanting about. Me, I have lived in the same house, with the same husband, ate the same breakfast, and had the same job from age 24 to retirement. The day I die, I will be thinking, shoot, man, I was just settling in.
I don’t see any reason why our friends and crows can’t be the same way.
Maybe it wasn’t Booboo’s idea. Maybe his family noticed he was taking chances with the peanut lady and thought they had to move to a safer neighborhood. Maybe they just packed it up and off he had to go, even though he’d gotten used to the school here and now he’d have to find a whole new school and new friends and learn life doesn’t guarantee you peanuts, Mister.
But I worry. I will admit up front that I couldn’t pick Booboo out of a crow lineup. I know him by his behavior and I judge him by the content of his character. But they’re right about Portland being unsafe. We’ve had war declared on us by our own president, troops and all. Our president doesn’t give one orange shit about character. Maybe Booboo and his family self-deported.
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