ANTHROPOMORPHORWHATCHACALLIT

Ravens must be the most intelligent of birds. With coyotes they share the impish mischief and clever intent for which native peoples sanctify both species as trickster gods. Improvising odd, comical capers apparently for the bird-brained fun of it, ravens are like devious half cousins, socially inferior but always maintaining some unfair advantage. And always laughing about it! They become aerobatic maestros at a few weeks of age, mark lift for us as if that were their divine purpose, and even years into adulthood demonstrate more playful curiosity than many of our own species. Living decades in one place they eventually develop what we might call personalities, though the ‘sentiments’ they express are nothing akin to sympathy or generosity.Somewhere in the past, people gave illustrative names to flocks of different bird species, such as a ‘raft of ducks’, a ‘ballet of swans’, a ‘flamboyance of flamingos’ and aptly, a ‘conspiracy of ravens’. I learned a lot from the tricks one conspiracy played on me.I was soaring along a mountain range, lucky to have them ahead locating lift. Hawks and eagles will hold position as we soar nearby, but ravens always flee. They would mark lift everywhere they found it, but then flee when I arrived.  After eluding me several times in different ways, these rascals finally climbed right up into the base of a cloud. So – don’t tell anyone – I sneaked into the attic with them. Of course that didn’t work. While I recovered from a frightening inverted spiral they moved on again.Next, I spotted them well downwind of the mountain – where sink should be… Still, they were circling and climbing, so I followed there too. Turned out they were flapping their wings in a sink hole. Having faked me into it, the conspiracy snidely hurried back across that ridge to the kind air it lured me from, leaving me behind for good.And yes, like coyotes, ravens possess an uncanny ability to simply dis a p p e a r…