Gratitude 87

I am especially grateful for ravens.  They are a marvellous and very mystic bird.  Rather like crows, but much larger, and hated and feared by their smaller rivals.  I saw six or seven today all perched together in a small tree, calling back and forth to one another.  One would find it unusual to find these birds in the city, but they are surprisingly common here.  Ravens are generally associated with wilderness, tall barren mountains, dark northern forests.  Anywhere that is hundreds, even thousands of miles from human contact.  They have become surprisingly habituated to humans here in Vancouver.

At least two or three times a week I have long been used to hearing the sonorous croak that can only come from a raven.  I have often seen them hanging out around the Granville Bridge and the Grandview Cut, as well as other places.  Today, I saw the seven ravens in another residential area near Queen Elizabeth Park.  They have become remarkably tame and trusting around humans.  They must somehow sense that they are admired and revered by many of us here.

Yes, the raven can also be a bird of mal aguero, Spanish for ill omen.  They have often been associated with the occult, the mystical, even the Satanic.  They are omens of death and bad fortune.  They are tricksters and channels of the spirit.  They are incredibly intelligent and playful birds, their intelligence equalling, perhaps even surpassing, that of chimps and dolphins.  Crows hate them and are always mobbing and attacking ravens.  I don't think the ravens, who indulgently tolerate the bad treatment, really mean them any harm.  Ravens are much bigger and more majestic and (I believe) more beautiful.  Perhaps the crows are just jealous.

But ravens do have their dark side.  They are very cunning predators and huge opportunists.  I will recount here something that actually traumatized me for a while.  I was crossing the short bridge over the Grandview Cut on Woodland Drive.  There was the resident raven perched below on a tree branch.  Perched next to him was a parakeet.  It was a beautiful bright yellow, or lutino parakeet.



It must have escaped from its cage.  It was perched right next to the much larger raven, affectionately snuggling up to the huge black bird.  It was a very tender and heartwarming display of interspecies affection or so I thought.  Suddenly, the raven attacked the parakeet, stabbing it in the neck several times with its big sharp beak.  I couldn't bear to stick around to see the end of it, knowing that this harmless, vulnerable little bird had just become lunch for a giant black corvid.  I was thunderstruck and disconsolate.  I also felt like that little parakeet, because I was at the time very poor and emotionally traumatized from many bad things that had happened to me.  It was only later in the afternoon, when I saw a huge rainbow spanning over the mountains that I could feel any sense of hope revive in me.  To this day, I still think of that parakeet.   I haven't stopped admiring ravens.