"Nevermore"

Kerala Raven calmly not attacking anyone!

The other day on the way home from work, I had an Alfred Hitchcock moment. 

There I was on the Byron Pathway, minding my own business, listening to my iPod,  grooving along when suddenly – Whack!!! 

Someone whapped me upside the back of my head.

I turned around, half expecting to see one of my colleagues.  But no one was there. No one human, that is.  There was, however, a dizzy looking raven staggering to the lowest branch of a nearby tree. 

Apparently the bird had flown into the back of my head, nearly knocking both of us out. Call me Tippi Hedren.  It was like The Birds had come to Ottawa.

Was it an accident?  Was the bird old, disoriented or drunk? Is the back of my head transparent like a window? 

Or did the bird to it on purpose? Did I walk too close to its nest or get in between it and its dinner?  Or did I offend it in some mysterious way?  Was it trying to warn me about something in the manner of Poe’s immortal bird?

I will never know.

I have always thought birds were too smart and good at flying to bash into people.  But it seems that run-ins between humans and our fine feathered friends are not as uncommon as I had thought. 

My sister’s workplace has an annual problem with seagulls nesting on the roof and then dive-bombing people as they go to work.  Seagulls are notoriously swoopy birds, as anyone who has ever tried to eat French fries on the beach knows well. 

On the beaches in Goa and Kerala, there are no seagulls – but there are lots of crows racketing around, especially early in the morning.  Unlike their gull cousins, they seem to be satisfied with scavenging dead fish, and leave people alone.

In the UK a few years ago, flocks of ravens began attacking livestock in the same manner as Hitchcock’s avian thugs in The Birds.  No wonder the collective noun for these impressively aggressive birds is a “murder” or a “conspiracy.”

There are scads of superstitions about ravens from all over the world, with camps divided pretty equally on whether they are good luck or bad luck omens. 

I’m going with the camp that calls them tricksters – and agents of transformation or change because I believe that people are responsible for their own “luck”.  And aren't we all always in the process of change and transformation?