by Ruskin Bond
It wasn’t safe to hang around there, so I flew out the window with this dashed ring still round my neck.
Serviette or napkin rings, that’s what they are called. Quite unnecessary objects, but some humans—particularly the well-to-do sort—seem to like having them on their tables, holding bits of cloth in place. The cloth is used for wiping the mouth. Have you ever heard of such nonsense?
Anyway, there I was with a fat napkin ring round my neck, and as I perched on the wall trying to get it off, the entire human family gathered on their veranda to watch me.
There was the Colonel sahib and his wife, the memsahib; there was the scrawny Junior sahib (worst of the lot); there was a mischievous boy (the Colonel sahib’s grandson) known as the Baba; and there was the cook (who usually flung orange peels at me) and the gardener (who once tried to decapitate me with a spade), and the dog Tiger who, like most dogs, tries unsuccessfully to be human.
Today they weren’t cursing and shaking their fists at me; they were just standing and laughing their heads off. What’s so funny about a crow with its head stuck in a napkin ring?
Worse was to follow.
The noise had attracted the other crows in the area, and if there’s one thing crows detest, it’s a crow who doesn’t look like a crow.
They swooped low and dived on me, hammering at the wretched napkin ring, until they had knocked me off the wall and into a flower-bed. Then six or seven toughs landed on me with every intention of finishing me off.
‘Hey, boys!’ I cawed. ‘This is me, Speedy! What are you trying to do—kill me?’
‘That’s right! You don’t look like Speedy to us. What have you done with him, hey?’
And they set upon me with even greater vigour.
‘You’re just like a bunch of lousy humans!’ I shouted. ‘You’re no better than them—this is just the way they carry on amongst themselves!’
That brought them to a halt. They stopped trying to peck me to pieces, and stood back, looking puzzled. The napkin ring had been shattered in the onslaught and had fallen to the ground.
‘Why, it’s Speedy!’ said one of the gang.
‘None other!’
‘Good old Speedy—what are you doing here? And where’s the guy we were hammering just now?’
There was no point in trying to explain things to them. Crows are like that. They’re all good pals—until one of them tries to look different. Then he could be just another bird.
‘He took off for Tibet,’ I said. ‘It was getting unhealthy for him around here.’
Summertime is here again. And although I’m a crow for all seasons, I must admit to a preference for the summer months.
Humans grow lazy and don’t pursue me with so much vigour. Garbage cans overflow. Food goes bad and is constantly being thrown away. Overripe fruit gets tastier by the minute. If fellows like me weren’t around to mop up all these unappreciated riches, how would humans manage?
There’s one character in the bungalow, the Junior sahib, who will never appreciate our services, it seems. He simply hates crows. The small boy may throw stones at us occasionally, but then, he’s the sort who throws stones at almost anything. There’s nothing personal about it. He just throws stones on principle.
The memsahib is probably the best of the lot. She often throws me scraps from the kitchen—onionskins, potato peels, crusts, and leftovers—and even when I nip in and make off with something not meant for me (like a jam tart or a cheese pakora) she is quite sporting about it. The Junior sahib looks outraged, but the lady of the house says, ‘Well, we’ve all got to make a living somehow, and that’s how crows make theirs. It’s high time you thought of earning a living.’ Junior sahib’s her nephew—that’s his occupation. He has never been known to work.
The Colonel sahib has a sense of humour but it’s often directed at me. He thinks I’m a comedian.
He discovered I’d been making off with the occasional egg from the egg basket on the veranda, and one day, without my knowledge, he made a substitution.
Right on top of the pile I found a smooth round egg, and before anyone could shout ‘Crow!’ I’d made off with it. It was abnormally light. I put it down on the lawn and set about cracking it with my strong beak, but it would keep slipping away or bounding off into the bushes. Finally I got it between my feet and gave it a good hard whack. It burst open, to my utter astonishment there was nothing inside!
I looked up and saw the old man standing on the veranda, doubled up with laughter.
‘What are you laughing at?’ asked the memsahib, coming out to see what it was all about.
‘It’s that ridiculous crow!’ guffawed the Colonel, pointing at me. ‘You know he’s been stealing our eggs. Well, I placed a ping-pong ball on top of the pile, and he fell for it! He’s been struggling with that ball for twenty minutes! That will teach him a lesson.’
It did. But I had my revenge later, when I pinched a brand new toothbrush from the Colonel’s bathroom.
The Junior sahib has no sense of humour at all. He idles about the house and grounds all day, whistling or singing to himself.
‘Even that crow sings better than Uncle,’ said the boy.
A truthful boy; but all he got for his honesty was a whack on the head from his uncle.
Anyway, as a gesture of appreciation, I perched on the garden wall and gave the family a rendering of my favourite crow song, which is my own composition. Here it is, translated for your benefit:
Oh, for the life of a crow!
A bird who’s in the know.
Although we are cursed,
We are never dispersed—
We’re always on the go!
I know I’m a bit of a rogue
(And my voice wouldn’t pass for a brogue),
But there’s no one as sleek
Or as neat with his beak—
So they’re putting my picture in Vogue!
Oh, for the life of a crow!
I reap what I never sow,
They call me a thief—
Pray I’ll soon come to grief—
But there’s no getting rid of a crow!
I gave it everything I had, and the humans—all of them on the lawn to enjoy the evening breeze, listened to me in silence, struck with wonder at my performance.
When I had finished, I bowed and preened myself, waiting for the applause.
They stared at each other for a few seconds. Then the Junior sahib stooped, picked up a bottle opener, and flung it at me.
Well, I ask you!
What can I say about humans? I do my best to defend them from all kinds of criticism, and this is what I get for my pains.
Anyway, I picked up the bottle opener and added it to my collection of odds and ends.
It was getting dark, and soon everyone was stumbling around, looking for another bottle opener. Junior sahib’s popularity was even lower than mine.
One day Junior sahib came home carrying a heavy shotgun. He pointed it at me a few times and I dived for cover. But he didn’t fire. Probably I was out of range.
‘He’s only threatening you,’ said Slow from the safety of the jamun tree, where he sat in the shadows. ‘He probably doesn’t know how to fire the thing.’
But I wasn’t taking any chances. I’d seen a sly look on Junior sahib’s face, and I decided that he was trying to make me careless. So I stayed well out of range.
Then one evening I received a visit from my cousin, Charm. He’d come to me for a loan. He wanted some new bottle tops for his collection and had brought me a mouldy old toothbrush to offer in exchange.
Charm landed on the garden wall, toothbrush in his beak, and was waiting for me to join him there, when there was a flash and a tremendous bang. Charm was sent several feet into the air, and landed limp and dead in a flower-bed.
‘I’ve got him, I’ve got him!’ shouted Junior sahib. ‘I’ve shot that blasted crow!’
Throwing away the gun, Junior sahib ran out into the garden, overcome with joy. He pick
ed up my fallen relative, and began running around the bungalow with his trophy.
The rest of the family had collected on the veranda.
‘Drop that thing at once!’ called the memsahib.
‘Uncle is doing a war dance,’ observed the boy.
‘It’s unlucky to shoot a crow,’ said the Colonel.
I thought it was time to take a hand in the proceedings and let everyone know that the right crow—the one and only Speedy—was alive and kicking. So I swooped down the jackfruit tree, dived through Junior sahib’s window, and emerged with one of his socks.
Triumphantly flaunting his dead crow, Junior sahib came dancing up the garden path, then stopped dead when he saw me perched on the window-sill, a sock in my beak. His jaw fell, his eyes bulged; he looked like the owl in the banyan tree.
‘You shot the wrong crow!’ shouted the Colonel, and everyone roared with laughter.
Before Junior sahib could recover from the shock, I took off in a leisurely fashion and joined Slow on the wall.
Junior sahib came rushing out with the gun, but by now it was too dark to see anything, and I heard the memsahib telling the Colonel, ‘You’d better take that gun away before he does himself a mischief.’ So the Colonel took Junior indoors and gave him a brandy.
I composed a new song for Junior sahib’s benefit, and sang it to him outside his window early next morning:
I understand you want a crow
To poison, shoot or smother;
My fond salaams, but by your leave
I’ll substitute another;
Allow me then, to introduce
My most respected brother.
Although I was quite understanding about the whole tragic mix-up—I was, after all, the family’s very own house-crow—my fellow crows were outraged at what happened to Charm, and swore vengeance on Junior sahib.
‘Carvits splendens!’ they shouted with great spirit, forgetting that this title had been bestowed on us by a human.
In times of war, we forget how much we owe to our enemies.
Junior sahib had only to step into the garden, and several crows would swoop down on him, screeching and swearing and aiming lusty blows at his head and hands. He took to coming out wearing a sola-topee, and even then they knocked it off and drove him indoors. Once he tried lighting a cigarette on the veranda steps, when Slow swooped low across the porch and snatched it from his lips.
Junior sahib shut himself up in his room, and smoked countless cigarettes—a sure sign that his nerves were going to pieces.
Every now and then the memsahib would come out and shoous off; and because she wasn’t an enemy, we obliged by retreating to the garden wall. After all, Slow and I depended on her for much of our board if not for our lodging. But Junior sahib had only to show his face outside the house, and all the crows in the area would be after him like avenging furies.
‘It doesn’t look as though they are going to forgive you,’ said the memsahib.
‘Elephants never forget, and crows never forgive,’ said the Colonel.
‘Would you like to borrow my catapult, Uncle?’ asked the boy. ‘Just for self-protection, you know.’
‘Shut up,’ said Junior sahib and went to bed.
One day he sneaked out of the back door and dashed across to the garage. A little later the family’s old car, seldom used, came out of the garage with Junior sahib at the wheel. He’d decided that if he couldn’t take a walk in safety he’d go for a drive. All the windows were up.
No sooner had the car turned into the driveway than about a dozen crows dived down on it, crowding the bonnet and flapping in front of the windscreen. Junior sahib couldn’t see a thing. He swung the steering wheel left, right and centre, and the car went off the driveway, ripped through a hedge, crushed a bed of sweet peas and came to a stop against the trunk of a mango tree.
Junior sahib just sat there, afraid to open the door. The family had to come out of the house and rescue him.
‘Are you all right?’ asked the Colonel.
‘I’ve bruised my knees,’ said Junior sahib.
‘Never mind your knees,’ said the memsahib, gazing around at the ruin of her garden. ‘What about my sweet peas?’
‘I think your uncle is going to have a nervous breakdown,’ I heard the Colonel saying.
‘What’s that?’ asked the boy. ‘Is it the same as a car having a breakdown?’
‘Well—not exactly … But you could call it a mind breaking up.’
Junior sahib had been refusing to leave his room or take his meals. The family was worried about him. I was worried, too. Believe it or not, we crows are among the very few who sincerely desire the preservation of the human species.
‘He needs a change,’ said the memsahib.
‘A rest cure,’ said the Colonel sarcastically. ‘A rest from doing nothing.’
‘Send him to Switzerland,’ suggested the boy.
‘We can’t afford that. But we can take him up to a hill station.’
The nearest hill station was some fifty miles as the human drives (only ten as the crow flies). Many people went up during the summer months. It wasn’t fancied much by crows. For one thing, it was a tidy sort of place, and people lived in houses that were set fairly far apart. Opportunities for scavenging were limited. Also it was rather cold and the trees were inconvenient and uncomfortable. A friend of mine who had spent a night in a pine tree said he hadn’t been able to sleep because of prickly pine needles and the wind howling through the branches.
‘Let’s all go up for a holiday,’ said the memsahib. ‘We can spend a week in a boarding house. All of us need a change.’
A few days later the house was locked up, and the family piled into the old car and drove off to the hills.
I had the grounds to myself.
The dog had gone too, and the gardener spent all day dozing in his hammock. There was no one around to trouble me.
‘We’ve got the whole place to ourselves,’ I told Slow.
‘Yes, but what good is that? With everyone gone, there are no throwaways, giveaways and takeaways!’
‘We’ll have to try the house next door.’
‘And be driven off by the other crows? That’s not our territory, you know. We can go across to help them, or to ask for their help, but we’re not supposed to take their pickings. It just isn’t cricket, old boy.’
We could have tried the bazaar or the railway station, where there is always a lot of rubbish to be found, but there is also a lot of competition in those places. The station crows are gangsters. The bazaar crows are bullies. Slow and I had grown soft. We’d have been no match for the bad boys.
‘I’ve just realized how much we depend on humans,’ I said.
‘We could go back to living in the jungle,’ said Slow.
‘No, that would be too much like hard work. We’d be living on wild fruit most of the time. Besides, the jungle crows won’t have anything to do with us now. Ever since we took up with humans, we became the outcasts of the bird world.’
‘That means we’re almost human.’
‘You might say we have all their vices and none of their virtues.’
‘Just a different set of values, old boy.’
‘Like eating hens’ eggs instead of crows’ eggs. That’s something in their favour. And while you’re hanging around here waiting for the mangoes to fall, I’m off to locate our humans.’
Slow’s beak fell open. He looked like—well, a hungry crow.
‘Don’t tell me you’re going to follow them up to the hill station? You don’t even know where they are staying.’
‘I’ll soon find out,’ I said, and took off for the hills.
You’d be surprised at how simple it is to be a good detective, if only you put your mind to it. Of course, if Ellery Queen had been able to fly, he wouldn’t have required fifteen chapters and his father’s assistance to crack a case.
Swooping low over the hill station, it wasn’t long before I spotted my humans’ ol
d car. It was parked outside a boarding house called the Climber’s Rest. I hadn’t seen anyone climbing, but dozing in an armchair in the garden was my favourite human.
I perched on top of a colourful umbrella and waited for Junior sahib to wake up. I decided it would be rather inconsiderate of me to disturb his sleep, so I waited patiently on the brolly, looking at him with one eye and keeping one eye on the house. He stirred uneasily, as though he’d suddenly had a bad dream; then he opened his eyes. I must have been the first thing he saw.
‘Good morning,’ I cawed, in a friendly tone—always ready to forgive and forget, that’s Speedy!
He leapt out of the armchair and ran into the house, hollering at the top of his voice.
I supposed he hadn’t been able to contain his delight at seeing me again. Humans can be funny that way. They’ll hate you one day and love you the next.
Well, Junior sahib ran all over the boarding house, screaming: ‘It’s that crow, it’s that crow! He’s following me everywhere!’
Various people, including the family, ran outside to see what the commotion was about, and I thought it would be better to make myself scarce. So I flew to the top of a spruce tree and stayed very still and quiet.
‘Crow! What crow?’ said the Colonel.
‘Our crow!’ cried Junior sahib. ‘The one that persecutes me. I was dreaming of it just now, and when I opened my eyes, there it was, on the garden umbrella!’
‘There’s nothing there now,’ said the memsahib. ‘You probably hadn’t woken up completely.’
‘He is having illusions again,’ said the boy.
‘Delusions,’ corrected the Colonel.
‘Now look here,’ said the memsahib, ‘you’ll have to pull yourself together. You’ll take leave of your senses if you don’t.’
