Crow attack

Swoosh…. I bent down instinctively..What was that? As soon as I raised my head to look around there comes another attack..A pair of crows..attacking in turn..Keeping one eye on the sky I quickly head for the cover..

It doesn’t take a lion to hurt you. A crows’s beak has enough punch in it to break the skull. You don’t believe..Then you see the wild variety of a walnuts in the hills of Kumaon..These nuts are tough and it takes a solid hit form a 5 pound stone to break these nuts...And crows find these easy enough to break.Don’t worry though..Like any other wild bird or animal they need a reason to attack you. “The Birds” was a piece of fiction.

The adventurous one, among the young crows, often falls down its nests while testing the strengths of the new found winds. As it can’t fly back to the nest, the parents have no other option but to defend it while it hops around the ground below the nesting site. If you happen to come near the baby crow, you become target of the bird attack. The beauty of the attack is that the parents work in pairs. The mother would come down from a tree, and hit you with the beak and then continue to the next tree. If you continue to move closer to the baby crow the father takes off from the opposite tree for a follow up strike.

I soon left the crows to their own devices. But the problem persisted throughout the day. The baby crow caught attention of my dog. While the dog was watching with heightened state of curiosity when crow attacked my mother. She was actually hit in the head and got a goose bump in her skull. The dog, helplessly chained, started barking feverishly. After all it was encroachment of its air space.

The beautiful part of the childhood was the novel experiences like this which happened almost without notice. It was fun. Soon I decided that the best way to put an end to the commotion it to let the dog go loose. The small amount of guilt was soon overcome by the argument that the dog is also part of nature and if it kills the baby bird, its nature’s rule. It was a convenient argument.

As I released the dog it approached the baby crow in a confidant manner. It didn’t rush, the way it usually does while attacking unannounced human visitors. The crow came swooping down but the dog escaped the beak in a quick reflexive move. Before it could recover the other crow made the swooping attack, hitting its back.

The dog, visibly distracted, started looking at the tree anticipating the next attack. The baby crow, on its own accord, hopped into a relatively inaccessible position. The crows had achieved their aim so they remained in the tree, closely monitoring the situation on the ground. The dog, soon decided to put its mind on the unfinished business but the baby crow wasn’t there. It looked perplexed. But the dog soon figured out where the baby crow..As the dog tried to approach there were more attacks. The dog now got real angry and started barking and showing of as it its about to pounce upon the baby crow..The crows on their part refused to give up and mounted a unceasing strike. They started circling the dog and swooping down at an opportune moment. The dog had no option but to give up and it did.

The crow has a special status in Kumaon. Every Makar Shankranti, a festival in the January, the Kumaoni people prepare a feast on the previous night. No one is supposed to eat any of the prepared dishes till crow eats a piece on the morning of Makar Shankranti. All crows are busy that day. Everyone is shouting from their roof tops calling the crow to eat the poori(a type of bread) but they are overwhelmed by the calls

But they do a good job. They take the offerings and transport them to the hiding places and come back. Within 2-3 hours every house in the town gets to eat what they prepared last night. But no one bothered to ask the crow how does it feel on that day? “Aren’t humans lil crazy??”