Crows

Man has always conspired with the beasts, hunted with them, fed them, and found uses for them.

In the first instance man formed a pact with the wolves, to hunt with them, to use their superior senses to track prey, that they might use man's cunning to kill it. In time, wolves became dogs, a they became more pleasing to man, more agreeable to him, until they lived beside him, hunted with him, and tied their fate to his.

The wolves were attracted to man, but so too were the rats; when man began to farm he filled silos with grain and the rats soon followed, drawn by the prospect of an easy meal.

Wild cats were the perfect foil for these rats; quick enough to catch them, and drawn to the places where they were most congregated. Man and the cat soon formed a pact: mutual benefit, shelter in exchange for pest control. Cats, much like dogs, took to the company of others which were no so different from them: apex predators, hunters, working only for brief periods to make the kill, and then relaxing in the sunshine, preferably touching skin with another predator.

When man looks at the lion and the lioness on the plains of Africa he does not find it hard to see himself; they spend more of their day snuggling in the sun, sleeping, yawning, playing, because predators have no need to be alert, or to do much beyond spending a few hours a week securing a fresh carcass. And apex predators have nothing to fear expect for boredom, or loneliness.

But, when a man looks at a rat he finds himself disgusted, at least in general.

This pitiful creature, with eyes spread too wide, with constant twitching movements, never at rest in the open.

This bothers man.

But the rat finds itself near the bottom of the food chain, and so it has much to fear; man sees this as cowardice, as malign sneakiness, as diseased, or even cursed, but that is the arrogance of an apex predator.

The lion roars and makes itself known, it inspires fear and awe, but the rat remains hidden, waiting until the dark of night to venture out into the open.

Evolution designed us to malign the animals which are to be eaten by us, so as to make it less morally taxing to be the eater, and evolution made us think the lion noble, and the cat proud, and the dog loyal, because they are like us. To a man, the cow seems dumb, the chicken mindless, the fish almost nonliving, the mollusc little more than a plant.

Even in the case of a horse, man finds himself saying that the beast of burden is to be "broken", to be tamed, to be unworthy of anything but blind servitude.

Yet, the cat and the dog are his equals, his companions, his friends.

Fear is the natural state of the prey animal, a state which is maligned by predators. At any moment the rat might be scooped up by an owl, or pounced upon by a cat, and so he twitches his eyes and his head, and so his eyes are far apart, his vision not keen, for he must be aware of all movement and always ready to respond with mortal fear, for no other response is as likely to save his life.

Humans have always attracted animals, but we only sympathise with so many of them.

From the time that we began to crow crops and till fields we have attracted the attention of crows.

The crow is a fearful creature when out in the open, for it, like the rat, could, at any moment, be scooped up by a buzzard, but the crow, like the cat, has always been wherever humans are. Indeed, they say us turning over the soil to plant our first crops and they thought about the many grubs and worms which we brought up to the surface, and they learned to keep watch on farmers.

They did not evolve to keep watch on us, they learned to.

Not enough time has passed since humans built farms and cities for crows to have evolved, no, they taught themselves the lesson that where there are humans, there is waste.

The dog and cat, though we love them, would not have come far without us, and yet, in all the towns and cities in the world you are never far from a crow.

We did not tame them or make them into companions, in fact we hate them, just as we hate all cautious, cowardly animals, but the crow, like the rat, is always where we are.

On the rooftops of every town and city in the world there are, perched, watching crows, living alongside our world, but not part of it, and without the need to be. They are still animals of their own, and yet they've become changed by us, changed into people-watchers, following the children that they've learned are clumsy and wasteful. They dare not interact with predators, and they've no need to, and we would not make them companions anyway, for they know the fear which we malign.

But the crows watched as Rome crumbled, and they fed on the corpses on the beaches of Normandy. They saw empires rise and fall and they only watched, without malice or intention, but only with self-interest. Each day you are spotted by the eyes of a crow, and each day you are studied - even if only briefly - and assessed. Each time you dig up the soil in your garden you are watched, each time you toss food in the bin, you are observed by an intelligence honed to cautious survival, and to the balance of safety and prosperity.

Man looks at the predatory bird and he sees what he wants to see in himself; keen eyes, swiftness, nobility. But he fails to see the stupidity of the eagle, and the cleverness of the crow.

While we are turning forests into toothpicks to fuel the engine of capatalisim, the crows are watching and learning, always. When we disturb the raptor's food chain we simply wipe them out along with thier ecosystem, but the crows follow and learn and adapt.

Where we see genocide the crows see a lot of free, fresh meat lying around. Where we see streets being bombed the crows see fresh soil, riddled with bugs, being exposed.

The rise and fall of kings doesn't even shuffle the deck for them, war is noisy but profitable, and humans are a resource for them to exploit. In thier eyes it is we who are strange, and random, but after twelve thousand years of living alongside us they've learned the most vital lesson: stay close to the humans, but not too close.