For three days we’ve had a fledgling crow in our yard.
At first I didn’t know what I should do about the baby crow in my backyard, hopping around yet unable to fly.
A quick call to the animal shelter reassured me. Parent birds push their babies out of the nest before they can fly. They hide them around the neighborhood in different places to increase the odds that some of them won’t be found and eaten. And the parents hang around, continuing to feed each of the babies, until they can fly.
They also squawk, loudly, when anyone even appears that they might get close.
Some people might think I’m crazy to worry about a baby crow.
It’s a crow!
A bird that’s loud, obnoxious, and without notably pretty feathers.
But I’ve loved crows, and crow magic, for years.
Crow magic reminds us to see the hidden mystery in the everyday. Listen to a crow and (s)he will share the secrets of creation and magic that are available to each of us.
I was thrilled to have baby crow, and his protective parents, choose our yard!
I peeked through windows, watching as baby crow hopped to the edge of my porch, shook his tail, bounced twice and then jumped off the edge with a flutter of wings only to land in the flower pot four inches away.
He took a deep breath, hopped out of the pot, paced the porch and tried again. And again. And again.
Baby crow is gone now.
When I step out the back door the air is strangely silent. No parent crows warning me to stay back.
I hope that he finally learned to fly, rather than being eaten by one of the neighborhood feral cats. I’ll never know.
But his message to me remains:
There is magic in trying. In puffing up your chest, imagining yourself soaring through the clouds, and stepping off the edge. Again, and again, and again until you finally do fly.
There is magic in having elders watching over you, warning you about danger, nourishing you until you can do it yourself.
There is magic in working together, as the mother and father crow did, to nurture new life, new magic into the world.
I am reminded, with so much magic in the world that I can create whatever I dream.
And so can you.
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