This morning I got the back window seat on one of the articulated buses in Seattle. I was nose-in-book for most of the ride ("Don't Try This At Home : Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs" by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman - a great bus ride, as each tale is a separate chapter and all so far quite well-told). When we stopped at a traffic light on 2nd Ave, something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye - a crow standing on the top of a car parked at the curb.

He seemed quite dusty, very slim - and then I noticed his blue eyes. A young'un, then. He (or she!) stared back at me, shuffled a bit, and then hunched down and stared more intently and directly at me, shifting from staring straight down his beak at me to eying me with his head turned sideways. He hopped closer and eyed me again.

Then suddenly he launched himself at the bus - not right at me behind the window, but ... above the window, but not on top of the bus. I have no idea what he was attempting to do ... attack me? Attack the bus? Get on top of the bus - if it was that last one, he missed by a wide mile!

So, after flapping about and sqwaking for a couple seconds, he dropped to the street - under the bus. And the light changed to green. The bus started up, and I heard a "SQWORK!" and the little crow hustled out from under the bus a cloud of feathers, dust, and paper scraps - and we were gone.

What a lovely sight it was, face to face with the crow - those blue eyes! The almost shiny black black legs and the crinkly feet - the range of textures on the bird was fascinating.

Susan Collicott
camelama at speakeasy.net
Ballard neighborhood
Seattle, WA