Free Crows by Candace Savage Page B

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    THE CROW DANCE

    AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN FOLKSONG RECORDED BY ZORA
NEALE HURSTON IN JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA, IN 1935. HURSTON DEFINED
FOLKLORE AS “THE BOILED-DOWN JUICE OF HUMAN LIVING.”
     
    Oh my Mamma come see that crow
see how he fly!
This crow this crow gonna fly tonight,
see how he fly!
Oh my Mamma come see that crow
see how he fly!
This crow this crow gonna fly tonight,
see how he fly!
Oh my Mamma come see that crow,
CAAAH!
Oh my Momma come see that crow,
see how he fly!

RAVEN’S GREATEST JOKE
    It is disconcerting to find so much of ourselves reflected in a feathered reptile: a bird. Disconcerting, but also revelatory. Our kinship with crows reminds us of the irrepressible creativity of evolution, that endless, free-form expression of the miraculous that has shaped all of Earth’s beings, including us. In the vernacular of creation, crows and humans are a kind of living pun, two species with different meanings but the same vibration. It’s the kind of double entendre that the mythic Raven would have loved, a cosmic witticism that both puts us in our place and raises our spirits. When a crow leaps into the air, our hearts take wing with it and we join in the rowdy revel of existence.

{ NOTES }
    Notes refer to direct quotations only.
     
    18 Raven speaks, from “ Tlingit Myths and Texts: Myths Recorded in English at Wrangell: 31, Raven, Part I.” http://www.sacredtexts.com/nam/nw/tmt/tmt035.htm .
    22 Raven speaks, from Edward Nelson, “The Eskimo About Bering Strait,” Bureau of American Ethnology Annual Report for 1896-97 18 (1899), pt. 1, quoted in Peter Goodchild, Raven Tales, 49, 50.
    23 Diamond, Jared M. The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee (London: Vintage, 1992), quoted Alex Kacelnik, Jackie Chappell, Ben Kenward, and Alex A. S. Weir, “Cognitive Adaptations for Tool-Related Behaviour in New Caledonian Crows,” forthcoming. Available online at http://www.cogsci.msu.edu/DSS/2004-2005/Kacelnik/Kacelnik_etal_Crows.pdf .
    29 “The Crow and the Pitcher,” from V. S. Vernon Jones, trans., Aesop’s Fables (London: Pan, 1975 [1912]), 23.
    37 Carolee Caffrey, personal communication.
    38 Carolee Caffrey,“Catching Crows,” North American Bird Bander 26 (October-December, 2001), no. 4: 149.
    39 Ovid, Metamorphoses, from http://www.auburn.edu/~downejm/Ovid/Metamorph2.htm#_Toc476707511 .
    40-41 Kevin McGowan, personal communication.
    45 Carolee Caffrey, personal communication and “Female-Biased Delayed Dispersal and Helping in American Crows,” Auk 109 (1992): 617.
    47 Robert M. Yerkes and Ada W. Yerkes, “Individuality, Temperament, and Genius in Animals,” from http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/editors_pick/1917_04_pick.html .
    49 Kevin McGowan, personal communication.
    52 Vittorio Baglione, personal communication.
    53 “Nest Defense,” paraphrased from http://members.tripod.com/~srinivasp/mythology/storypa7.html .
    60 “Raven Gets His Way,” from “Tlingit Myths and Texts: Myths Recorded in English at Wrangell: 31, Raven, Part 1.” http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/nw/tmt/tmt037.htm .
    61-62 Bernd Heinrich, Mind of the Raven (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), xiv.
    64 “The Three Ravens,” from Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 309-10.
    69 Bernd Heinrich, personal communication.
    70 Bernd Heinrich, Mind of the Raven (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 319.
    73 “Silverspot’s Treasures,” Ernest Thompson Seton, “Silverspot: The Story of a Crow,” Lobo, and Other Stories From Wild Animals I Have Known (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.), 71-72.
    77 “Raven Opens the Box,” based on “Raven Stories by the Marshall Journalism Class, Spring, 1995.” http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/Marshall/raven/RavenStealsSunStarsMoon.html .
    79 Thomas Bugnyar, personal communication.
    85 “Quoth the Corvid,” Theophrastus, quoted in Peter Goodchild, Raven Tales: Traditional Stories of Native Peoples (Chicago: