Yesterday my friend HC came over to visit with her kids. You may remember a couple who paid for Kurt's and my dinner the night he left for the Persian Gulf; that was HC and her husband. HC and I got to be good friends, and now we try to see each other as much as her extremely busy schedule would allow. She's just moved into a new home, and she was excited to see my new house.
While we were visiting here in the house, my doorbell rang. My doorbell NEVER rings. When T or J decide to drop by, they ALWAYS knock, they never ring the doorbell. So I was weirded out to begin with.
I was even more weirded out when I saw who it was. It was my neighbor, C, who's never shown any interest in me or in hanging out with me. Since I consider her to be kind of wacko, I don't mind at all. But I was very curious as to what she wanted.
She proceeded to apologize for busting in while I had company, but then spent a long while explaining herself. She told me that the night before, she had seen an injured crow and attempted to rescue it. She was able to put it into a box, but then she wanted to see the extent of its injuries and let it walk out of the box. When she did so, the crow decided to make its escape and it flew into my backyard. She wanted me to keep an eye out for it because she had to go to work and didn't have time to look for it, and she gave me the box she had set up for it in case I saw it. She assured me I didn't have to do anything else with it, that another neighbor (whom I've never met) would take it down to the island to the rescue people.
OK, first off, what is she doing getting near a crow?! West Nile virus notwithstanding, crows can carry some nasty diseases. Being from the East Coast, West Nile is first and foremost in my mind, even though I realize it hasn't made its way to the West Coast yet. But you never know -- it could make it here an year or so ahead of schedule, and we could have the first crow infected with West Nile in the state of Washington. Besides, it's not like crows have any intrinsic value. They don't really do much but make lots of noise.
Secondly, why try to continue to rescue an animal that obviously doesn't want to be rescued? Sometimes you just have to let Mother Nature take its course. Maybe it's not meant for that crow to survive.
Thirdly, doesn't she realize that if the crow was well enough to escape to my yard, it was probably long gone?? I realize that I have very large trees in my yard for it to take refuge in, but I also have a small, potentially yappy dog that had been outside all morning because he insisted on knocking down HC's 19-month-old daughter. Since I didn't want to foster a fear of dogs in such a young girl, I put Koolit outside, and he'd been barking at every passing human and animal for at least thirty minutes. I doubt the crow would have stuck around for that.
After HC and I spent a most lovely day together, which started out slow but got progressively better, I returned home about the same time C did. She told me she'd just gotten home from work, and she would come over to my yard to look for that damned crow again after she got some dinner. Much later, I was watching the baseball game with my sister (since it was one of the few games broadcast on ESPN for her, so she could watch the Mariners over on the East Coast), when I heard a lot of footsteps crunching around in my backyard.
I had mentioned to C that she could come over into my yard, but I meant if I wasn't home she was welcome to use the gates. She never came to my door and asked permission to come into my yard, even though she could hear my tv and see the lights on in my house. I thought that was extremely rude.
Not to mention the fact that it was nearly dark by the time she was looking for this crow. If she had two brain cells in her head together, she would realize that looking for a black crow in near darkness wasn't too smart. So they had flashlights out to light the way. Wouldn't the crow, had it still been in my trees, taken flight at the lights coming its way??
Besides the fact that I have a madrona in my backyard. When the Seattle area was first being settled, the native madronas were mistaken for magnolias, hence one of the hills of Seattle is named Magnolia Hill when it's really covered with madronas. Madronas share one characteristic with magnolias -- they both drop their leaves year-round. And those leaves are usually very dry once they drop, and if you're walking around on them they make a very loud crunching noise. So if the search party for the crow wasn't frightened off by my dog or the flashlights, it was probably headed way out of town with all the crunching of the madrona leaves underfoot of the search party.
Ummm....
DUH!!!
After about fifteen minutes of flashlights and crunching underfoot, the search party finally left. C came up to my open patio door and told me that they were leaving, and that she might be back the next day.
My only consolation to the whole trevail is that the area in which they were looking so diligently for this crow is the same area my dog uses for his toilet. :o)