Of Sparrows, Hawks and Crows

Ok, so I’ve been at home a lot this week. I’m sick again. I had an attack of Pleurisy a week and a half ago and well, I guess I pushed myself to hard, too soon, and here I am sick again. Feeling like I wish I could just die and get it over with. I lay around suffering, too dizzy in the head to be able to concentrate on anything other than a brainless drivel of DVDs. Reading Milton (my assignment for one of my classes) yeah, not happening. Every time I open the book the page goes all blurry on me. Just sitting here at the computer is giving me a headache, so why am I writing? Well, fate…destiny…just a really freaky life and death experience. I’m sure there’s a reason but for what I understand, it has to do with a hawk, a sparrow, and some crows.
I have a bird feeder in my back yard, it’s frequented by sparrows. They hang around all day long and despite the ally cats that stalk them now and then, they seem to be quite comfortable here. When I go out into the back yard they just fly over to the fence and wait until I’m out of the way before returning to the feeder. They seem to be used to me. There are also about four squirrels that have figured out how to get a free meal by hanging upside down from the fence and eating out of the little openings of the feeder, but I digress. I’ve been trying to draw some crows into the yard. At my old house I had a murder of crows that would sit right outside my bedroom window and wait for me to bring them food. They wouldn’t fly away from me either, they were really cool, of course when they got hungry at 6 in the morning and began cawing into my bedroom window it got a bit annoying, but for the most part I really enjoyed them. Anyway, I should probably note here that my totem has been the crow for a very long time now. If you don’t know what a totem is, then you may as well give it up now because the rest of this story probably won’t make much sense, so…Crow, my totem. About six years ago I met and fell in love with my current man, it was instantaneous, and I fell hard and fast, as I believe he did too. It’s actually a very romantic and not an every day type of story. Perhaps I’ll share it at some time, but not today. Today, we discuss sparrows, and crows, and hawks, right. Ok, so I had these beautiful crows that would frequent my abode (this is the one in the middle of the woods) and after my man moves in they stop hanging around as much. It wasn’t that he was doing anything to them, they just felt they had to keep there distance from him. Later I find out that his totem is the hawk, has been for many, many years. So, go figure, hawks and crows are enemies. Where one frequents the other avoids. I begin to suspect what happened to my crows. Time moves on, we move into the city, where of course, my man feels quite at home but where I struggle horribly to feel any sense of earth around me…hence, the bird feeder. So, as I said I’ve been trying to lure some crows into the yard, they roost during the winter months in an area not too far from here, but I have so far been unable to get them into the yard proper. Now the other day I spy a hawk in a tree in our front yard, yes a hawk, in the city, at the house where my man feels very comfortable and yes, where no crows will frequent. I think “Oh, pretty hawk” and I tell the kids to check it out. Even though I think crows are much cooler, I still admire the majesty of the hawk. Getting to the point here. The whole underlying totem and spiritual meanings and fate stuff is getting through, right? Ok, so today I’m looking out my kitchen window watching the sparrows feed. They’re busily flying back and forth from the chain link fence to the bird feeder. I’m watching several of them perched in the little holes of the chain link when, oh my god! These huge hawk wings appear out of no where and these hawk talons reach out and snatch a sparrow from the fence, just like that. Freakin wicked! Nature at its most real. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hold any ill will against the hawk, he’s doing what hawks do and I understand that. The question is, where are the crows? Have they lost they’re ability to rule the roost? Do they no longer have domain because the hawk has nested? And what if the crows can be brought back around, what then? It seems odd that the crows were more at home in the woods and the hawk seems to be at home in the city, but as the man and woman is concerned the woods fit the woman and the city the man. I see a connection, I feel the earth singing to me, and I hear the totems telling me their tales. So what happens now? It seems to me that life has always opened itself up in this way. Nature has always spoken to me like this and I know there’s a story here for me, so I’ll watch my sparrows, and I’ll watch the hawk, and because I cannot be disconnected, I will continue to call back the crows and then, the story will unfold.