by Ruskin Bond
Motu had a bad wound, but Grandmother cleaned it and applied a paste made of herbs. Then she laid strips of carrot over the wound—an old mountain remedy—and bandaged the leg. But it would be some time before Motu could run about again. By then it would probably be snowing and time to leave these high-altitude pastures and return to the valley. Meanwhile, the sheep had to be taken out to graze, and Grandfather decided to accompany Jai for the remaining period.
They did not see the golden eagle for two or three days, and, when they did, it was flying over the next range. Perhaps it had found some other source of food, or even another flock of sheep. ‘Are you afraid of the eagle?’ Grandfather asked Jai.
‘I wasn’t before,’ said Jai. ‘Not until it hurt Motu. I did not know it could be so dangerous. But Motu hurt it too. He banged straight into it!’
‘Perhaps it won’t bother us again,’ said Grandfather thoughtfully. ‘A bird’s wing is easily injured—even an eagle’s.’
Jai wasn’t so sure. He had seen it strike twice, and he knew that it was not afraid of anyone. Only when it learnt to fear his presence would it keep away from the flock.
The next day Grandfather did not feel well; he was feverish and kept to his bed. Motu was hobbling about gamely on three legs; the wounded leg was still very sore.
‘Don’t go too far with the sheep,’ said Grandmother. ‘Let them graze near the house.’
‘But there’s hardly any grass here,’ said Jai.
‘I don’t want you wandering off while that eagle is still around.’
‘Give him my stick,’ said Grandfather from his bed. Grandmother took it from the corner and handed it to the boy.
It was an old stick, made of wild cherry wood, which Grandfather often carried around. The wood was strong and well-seasoned; the stick was stout and long. It reached upto Jai’s shoulders.
‘Don’t lose it,’ said Grandfather. ‘It was given to me many years ago by a wandering scholar who came to the Tung temple. I was going to give it to you when you got bigger, but perhaps this is the right time for you to have it. If the eagle comes near you, swing the stick around your head. That should frighten it off!’
Clouds had gathered over the mountains, and a heavy mist hid the Tung temple. With the approach of winter, the flow of pilgrims had been reduced to a trickle. The shepherds had started leaving the lush meadows and returning to their villages at lower altitudes. Very soon the bears and the leopards and the golden eagles would have the high ranges all to themselves.
Jai used the cherry wood stick to prod the sheep along the path until they reached the steep meadows. The stick would have to be a substitute for Motu. And they seemed to respond to it more readily than they did to Motu’s mad charges.
Because of the sudden cold and the prospect of snow, Grandmother had made Jai wear a rough woollen jacket and a pair of high boots bought from a Tibetan trader. He wasn’t used to the boots—he wore sandals at other times—and had some difficulty in climbing quickly up and down the hillside. It was tiring work, trying to keep the flock together. The cawing of some crows warned Jai that the eagle might be around, but the mist prevented him from seeing very far.
After some time the mist lifted and Jai was able to see the temple and the snow-peaks towering behind it. He saw the golden eagle, too. It was circling high overhead. Jai kept dose to the flock—one eye on the eagle, one eye on the restless sheep.
Then the great bird stooped and flew lower. It circled the temple and then pretended to go away. Jai felt sure it would be back. And a few minutes later it reappeared from the other side of the mountain. It was much lower now, wings spread out and back, taloned feet to the fore, piercing eyes fixed on its target—a small lamb that had suddenly gone frisking down the slope, away from Jai and the flock.
Now it flew lower still, only a few feet off the ground, paying no attention to the boy.
It passed Jai with a great rush of air, and as it did so the boy struck out with his stick and caught the bird a glancing blow.
The eagle missed its prey, and the tiny lamb skipped away.
To Jai’s amazement, the bird did not fly off. Instead it landed on the hillside and glared at the boy, as a king would glare at a humble subject who had dared to pelt him with a pebble.
The golden eagle stood almost as tall as Jai. Its wings were still outspread. Its fierce eyes seemed to be looking through and through the boy.
Jai’s first instinct was to turn and run. But the cherry wood stick was still in his hands, and he felt sure there was power in it. He saw that the eagle was about to launch itself again at the lamb. Instead of running away, he ran forward, the stick raised above his head.
The eagle rose a few feet off the ground and struck out with its huge claws.
Luckily for Jai, his heavy jacket took the force of the blow. A talon ripped through the sleeve, and the sleeve fell away. At the same time the heavy stick caught the eagle across its open wing. The bird gave a shrill cry of pain and fury. Then it turned and flapped heavily away, flying unsteadily because of its injured wing.
Jai still clutched the stick, because he expected the bird to return; he did not even glance at his torn jacket. But the golden eagle had alighted on a distant rock and was in no hurry to return to the attack.
Jai began driving the sheep home. The clouds had become heavy and black, and presently the first snow-flakes began to fall.
Jai saw a hare go lolloping down the hill. When it was about fifty yards away, there was a rush of air from the eagle’s beating wings, and Jai saw the bird approaching the hare in a sidelong drive.
‘So it hasn’t been badly hurt,’ thought Jai, feeling a little relieved, for he could not help admiring the great bird. ‘Now it has found something else to chase for its dinner.’
The hare saw the eagle and dodged about, making for a clump of junipers. Jai did not know if it was caught or not, because the snow and sleet had increased and both bird and hare were lost in the gathering snow-storm.
The sheep were bleating behind him. One of the lambs looked tired, and he stooped to pick it up. As he did so, he heard a thin, whining sound. It grew louder by the second. Before he could look up, a huge wing caught him across the shoulders and sent him sprawling. The lamb tumbled down the slope with him, into a thorny bilberry bush.
The bush saved them. Jai saw the eagle coming in again, flying low. It was another eagle! One had been vanquished, and now here was another, just as big and fearless, probably the mate of the first eagle.
Jai had lost his stick and there was no way in which he could fight the second eagle. So he crept further into the bush, holding the lamb beneath him. At the same time he began shouting at the top of his voice—both to scare the bird away and to summon help. The eagle could not easily get at them now; but the rest of the flock was exposed on the hillside. Surely the eagle would make for them.
Even as the bird circled and came back in another dive, Jai heard fierce barking. The eagle immediately swung away and rose skywards.
The barking came from Motu. Hearing Jai’s shouts and sensing that something was wrong, he had come limping out of the house, ready to do battle. Behind him came another shepherd and—most wonderful of all—Grandmother herself, banging two frying-pans together. The barking, the banging and the shouting frightened the eagles away. The sheep scattered too, and it was some time before they could all be rounded up. By then it was snowing heavily.
‘Tomorrow we must all go down to Maku,’ said the shepherd.
‘Yes, it’s time we went,’ said Grandmother. ‘You can read your story-books again, Jai.’
‘I’ll have my own story to tell,’ said Jai.
When they reached the hut and Jai saw Grandfather, he said, ‘Oh, I’ve forgotten your stick!’
But Motu had picked it up. Carrying it between his teeth, he brought it home and sat down with it in the open doorway. He had decided the cherry wood was good for his teeth and would have chewed it up if Grandmother hadn’t taken it from him.
‘Never mind,’ said Grandfather, sitting up on his cot. ‘It isn’t the stick that matters. It’s the person who holds it.’
A Crow for All Seasons
Early to bed and early to rise makes a crow healthy, wealthy and wise.
They say it’s true for humans too. I’m not so sure about that. But for crows it’s a must.
I’m always up at the crack of dawn, often the first crow to break the night’s silence with a lusty caw. My friends and relatives, who roost in the same tree, grumble a bit and mutter to themselves, but they are soon cawing just as loudly. Long before the sun is up, we set off on the day’s work.
We do not pause even for the morning wash. Later in the day, if it’s hot and muggy, I might take a dip in some human’s bath water; but early in the morning we like to be up and about before everyone else. This is the time when trash cans and refuse dumps are overflowing with goodies, and we like to sift through them before the dustmen arrive in their disposal trucks.
Not that we are afraid of a famine in refuse. As human beings multiply, so does their rubbish.
Only yesterday I rescued an old typewriter ribbon from the dustbin, just before it was emptied. What a waste that would have been! I had no use for it myself, but I gave it to one of my cousins who got married recently, and she tells me it’s just right for her nest, the one she’s building on a telegraph pole. It helps her bind the twigs together, she says.
My own preference is for toothbrushes. They’re just a hobby, really, like stamp-collecting with humans. I have a small but select collection which I keep in a hole in the garden wall. Don’t ask me how many I’ve got—crows don’t believe there’s any point in counting beyond two—but I know there’s more than one, that there’s a whole lot of them in fact, because there isn’t anyone living on this road who hasn’t lost a toothbrush to me at some time or another.
We crows living in the jackfruit tree have this stretch of road to ourselves, but so that we don’t quarrel or have misunderstandings we’ve shared the houses out. I picked the bungalow with the orchard at the back. After all, I don’t eat rubbish and throw-aways all the time. Just occasionally I like a ripe guava or the soft flesh of a papaya. And sometimes I like the odd beetle as an hors d’oeuvre. Those humans in the bungalow should be grateful to me for keeping down the population of fruit-eating beetles, and even for recycling their refuse; but no, humans are never grateful. No sooner do I settle in one of their guava trees than stones are whizzing past me. So I return to the dustbin on the back veranda steps. They don’t mind my being there.
One of my cousins shares the bungalow with me, but he’s a lazy fellow and I have to do most of the foraging. Sometimes I get him to lend me a claw; but most of the time he’s preening his feathers and trying to look handsome for a pretty young thing who lives in the banyan tree at the next turning.
When he’s in the mood he can be invaluable, as he proved recently when I was having some difficulty getting at the dog’s food on the veranda.
This dog who is fussed over so much by the humans I’ve adopted is a great big fellow, a mastiff who pretends to a pedigree going back to the time of Genghis Khan—he likes to pretend one of his ancestors was the great Khan’s watchdog—but, as often happens in famous families, animal or human, there is a falling off in quality over a period of time, and this huge fellow—Tiger, they call him—is a case in point. All brawn and no brain. Many a time I’ve removed a juicy bone from his plate or helped myself to pickings from under his nose.
But of late he’s been growing canny and selfish. He doesn’t like to share any more. And the other day I was almost in his jaws when he took a sudden lunge at me. Snap went his great teeth; but all he got was one of my tail feathers. He spat it out in disgust. Who wants crow’s meat, anyway?
All the same, I thought, I’d better not be too careless. It’s not for nothing that a crow’s IQ is way above that of all other birds. And it’s higher than a dog’s, I bet.
I woke Cousin Slow from his midday siesta and said, ‘Hey, Slow, we’ve got a problem. If you want any of that delicious tripe today, you’ve got to lend a claw—or a beak. That dog’s getting snappier day by day.
Slow opened one eye and said, ‘Well, if you insist. But you know how I hate getting into a scuffle. It’s bad for the gloss on my feathers.’
‘I don’t insist,’ I said politely, ‘but I’m not foraging for both of us today. It’s every crow for himself.’
‘Okay, okay, I’m coming,’ said Slow, and with barely a flap he dropped down from the tree to the wall.
‘What’s the strategy?’ I asked.
‘Simple. We’ll just give him the old one-two.’
We flew across to the veranda. Tiger had just started his meal. He was a fast, greedy eater who made horrible slurping sounds while he guzzled his food. We had to move fast if we wanted to get something before the meal was over.
I sidled up to Tiger and wished him good afternoon.
He kept on gobbling—but quicker now.
Slow came up from behind and gave him a quick peck near the tail—a sensitive spot—and, as Tiger swung round snarling, I moved in quickly and snatched up several tidbits.
Tiger went for me, and I flew free-style for the garden wall. The dish was untended, so Slow helped himself to as many scraps as he could stuff in his mouth.
He joined me on the garden wall, and we sat there feasting, while Tiger barked himself hoarse below.
‘Go catch a cat,’ said Slow, who is given to slang. ‘You’re in the wrong league, big boy.’
The great sage Pratyasataka—ever heard of him? I guess not—once said, ‘Nothing can improve a crow.’
Like most human sages, he wasn’t very clear in his thinking, so there has been some misunderstanding about what he meant. Humans like to think that what he really meant was that crows were so bad as to be beyond improvement. But we crows know better. We interpret the saying as meaning that the crow is so perfect that no improvement is possible.
It’s not that we aren’t human—what I mean is, there are times when we fall from our high standards and do rather foolish things. Like at lunch time the other day.
Sometimes, when the table is laid in the bungalow, and before the family enters the dining room, I nip in through the open window and make a quick foray among the dishes. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to pick up a sausage or a slice of toast, or even a pat of butter, making off before someone enters and throws a bread knife at me. But on this occasion, just as I was reaching for the toast, a thin slouching fellow—Junior sahib they call him—entered suddenly and shouted at me. I was so startled that I leapt across the table, seeking shelter. Something flew at me and in an effort to dodge the missile I put my head through a circular object and then found it wouldn’t come off.
It wasn’t safe to hang around there, so I flew out of the window with this dashed ring still round my neck.
Serviette or napkin rings, that’s what they are called. Quite unnecessary objects, but some humans—particularly the well-to-do sort—seem to like having them on their tables, holding bits of cloth in place. The cloth is used for wiping the mouth. Have you ever heard of such nonsense?
Anyway, there I was with a fat napkin ring round my neck, and as I perched on the wall trying to get it off, the entire human family gathered on their veranda to watch me.
There was the Colonel sahib and his wife, the memsahib; there was the scrawny Junior sahib (worst of the lot); there was a mischievous boy (the Colonel sahib’s grandson) known as the Baba; and there was the cook (who usually flung orange peels at me) and the gardener (who once tried to decapitate me with a spade), and the dog Tiger who, like most dogs, tries unsuccessfully to be a human.
Today they weren’t cursing and shaking their fists at me; they were just standing and laughing their heads off. What’s so funny about a crow with its head stuck in a napkin ring?
Worse was to follow.
The noise had attracted the other crows in the area, an
d if there’s one thing crows detest, it’s a crow who doesn’t look like a crow.
They swooped low and dived on me, hammering at the wretched napkin ring, until they had knocked me off the wall and into a flower-bed. Then six or seven toughs landed on me with every intention of finishing me off.
‘Hey, boys!’ I cawed. ‘This is me, Speedy! What are you trying to do—kill me?’
‘That’s right! You don’t look like Speedy to us. What have you done with him, hey?’
And they set upon me with even greater vigour.
‘You’re just like a bunch of lousy humans!’ I shouted. ‘You’re no better than them—this is just the way they carry on amongst themselves!’
That brought them to a halt. They stopped trying to peck me to pieces, and stood back, looking puzzled. The napkin ring had been shattered in the onslaught and had fallen to the ground.
‘Why, it’s Speedy!’ said one of the gang.
‘None other!’
‘Good old Speedy—what are you doing here? And where’s the guy we were hammering just now?’
There was no point in trying to explain things to them. Crows are like that. There’re all good pals—until one of them tries to look different. Then he could be just another bird.
‘He took off for Tibet,’ I said. ‘It was getting unhealthy for him around here.’
Summertime is here again. And although I’m a crow for all seasons, I must admit to a preference for the summer months.
Humans grow lazy and don’t pursue me with so much vigour. Garbage cans overflow. Food goes bad and is constantly being thrown away. Overripe fruit gets tastier by the minute. If fellows like me weren’t around to mop up all these unappreciated riches, how would humans manage?
There’s one character in the bungalow, the Junior sahib, who will never appreciate our services, it seems. He simply hates crows. The small boy may throw stones at us occasionally, but then, he’s the sort who throws stones at almost anything. There’s nothing personal about it. He just throws stones on principle.