I don’t know what it is with Folse’s and my fascination with crows. Or theirs with us.
Reading his latest, I recalled my grandmother feeding me as a small child, especially during the festival of Pongal, with the words, “Kaka pudi, kanu pudi.” A little morsel of whatever I ate would first be set aside on the plate for the crow. I’ve learned since then that it is inauspicious for a Hindu not to feed a crow before eating himself.
That dreaded “inauspicious” word again. I swear it’s been holding orthodox religious folks back for millennia, however brilliant and capable they are without all this nonsense.
But, crows have followed me all over the world, even where they are commonly not found (like my backyard in Out In The Sticks, Ohio) and one can’t help but feel there is something to that. I believe D will kill me if I begin to feed them given that they already take turns sitting on our roof and no other, tapping on it with their beaks. It’s like they’re trying to Morse-code a message to us, a language I don’t understand, unfortunately. Or there are some really tasty bugs living in our eaves.
Crazy, smart, beautiful, misunderstood birds. No wonder Shani rides a crow. Shani, not Yama who rides a water buffalo. There’s a difference.
Crow realized there were two Gods-
One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.
— Crow’s Theology by Ted Hughes
A fascinating link behind Kaka pudi, kanu pudi. If you didn’t click go back and do it.
I have been a “crow” person for decades. The Navajo consider them to be very bad omens, along with jays, as they are supposed to carry the souls of the departed, and the Navajo have all kinds of stories about that. Meanwhile, the Hopi have Crow Mother, one of the great kachinas. She’s really beautiful. (Remind me, btw, next time you’re here, I have something for you.) When I hiked the land grant near my house in NMex, the crows would follow me. I had a crow as a pet for quite a while as he couldn’t fly due to a broken wing, so he came to live with me. I learned his language, which is remarkably sophisticated and can speak “crow.” I have one here in the Marigny that nags at me all the time.
All that having been said, find some Indian corn, in the Midwest you can probably find it in the grocery store for decoration. Get two or three ears of it and hang it on a tree. They might stop sitting on your roof because they love the Indian corn, or you can get corn in the bird feed section, scatter it near a tree in your yard and they might change venues. The only downside to this is that, if they do what my mountain crows did, they might take to hollering at your window when the corn is gone.