Blame The Crow, If You Must

When I returned home from Saturday aerobics, I could tell Squirrel #5 had met an untimely end, as four others had previously done, near where I laid bird seed out next to the back alley. The death announcement came not from the squirrel's brushy tail blowing listlessly in the wind, but from the big black crow standing over the body. The crow clutched a parking curb in one claw, and a pothole in the other, to help it hold its balance, as it methodically hammered its beak into the lifeless corpse. Four other squirrels nosed curiously about the corpse and the bird seed, then started running in circles, like incompetent clowns, when a Rav-4 came down the alley right through their midst. The squirrels barely escaped Squirrel #5's fate.

Two neighbor girls, one about six years old, and one about nine, bicycled down the alley to view the gruesome scene. They quickly bicycled home to announce the squirrel's death to their mother.

I went inside my home, but peeked outside again. The girls had returned to the scene, apparently seeking some kind of justice on the squirrel's behalf. The crow had fled into a tree, but the girls threw stones at it, as they denounced its villainy.