This morning I witnessed a confrontation between a young owl and four crows. The first crow was on the ground picking insects in my front yard, or so it seemed, but later I found out its job was operational—it was mapping out the area of struggle. The other three crows were in one of the trees behind my house with the owl.
It was the crow on the ground that gave the call and the other three responded raucously. The fight was on. The crow on the ground flew to the tree and joined the group. The owl jumped to a lower branch and the crows redistributed themselves, forming a ring around it. One crow jumped onto the owl’s branch and the others cheered. The owl spread its wings, raised its head and looked bigger, but still I could tell it wasn’t a full-grown adult. It arched towards the crow, heads almost touching, and the crow stood its ground. The owl then moved to the next tree and all the crows followed it. I couldn’t tell if there was fear trapped in its eyes or sheer determination. Who would win?
They kept on wrangling and seducing one another, getting as close to attacking as possible, then leaping from tree to tree, branch to branch, hoping perhaps that the other would strike first and then the real fight would break out. I watched in admiration. When the owl finally got to the tree in my front yard a distance away from where the crow had been on the ground, that’s when the crows decided to leave it alone. That’s when I realized that the crow on the ground was a leader of sorts and had outlined the circumference of the struggle.
After I was left to my own quiet, I wondered whether these birds had truly intended to fight or were they simply testing the other’s endurance and will? While I acknowledge struggle in the nature of their existence, I did not think at any one time that theirs was a life of struggle because of the fluid grace, skill and respectable engagement they displayed. The latter aspect, especially, had tension and heat fused in it, which in my human relations would be akin to stretching one’s patience. Under such pressure, such provocation, I’m not sure if I would hold back and recognize that what’s going on is a test of dignity instead of insult. It could also be both because each view carries within in it enough to prove its rightness.
The birds, however, demonstrated before my eyes that their existence, like their struggle, is not about rightness or wrongness. It’s my dual mind that makes me think in black and white. Moving forward, I would like to remember this lesson so that when the call comes to ride out the gray, I’d not be torn by either/or thinking.
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