We have all heard of the mourning dove. Most of us recognize a dove when we see it and the cooing of this lovely bird is recognized by all as seeming somewhat poignant, even sad. But, have you ever heard of a mourning crow?

As a boy growing up in the Illinois of the forties, hunting, fishing and trapping were unremarkable activities. I was shooting squirrels, rabbits and pheasants when I was six or seven years old to contribute to the family’s larder.

During that time of imminent domain we practiced our own form of ethnic cleansing for darned near every kind of animal or bird was considered vermin.

It was nothing to drive down a country road and see where a farmer had hung twenty, thirty or more owls and hawks on his barbed wire fence as trophies attesting to his prowess. (During that time hawks of all kinds were called, “chicken hawks” and when a hawk was sighted a regular hew and cry went up, “There’s a chicken hawk, Run, get the gun!”)

Of course what the farmers didn’t realize was that they setting themselves up for a very real infestation of vermin such as rats and mice which proliferated to plague proportions without their natural regulators, the hawks and owls to keep them in check.

And if you think the hawks had it bad, baby, you surely didn’t want to be a crow.

Crows were at the top of the list of the undesirable element and also at the top of every boy’s hit list. They were shot, poisoned, and dynamited at their roosts literally by the tens of thousands at government encouragement and expense.

At that time the F.F.A., Future Farmers of America, encouraged hunting and trapping as proper land management as did the Boy Scouts of America. Trapping with the steel leghold trap is a cruel business but at that time the B.S.A. had a trapping honor.

We shot everything and anything that moved and bragged of the killing.

Now I said that to say this, I considered it right and proper to shoot animals.

Some things happen in our lives that have a profound impact, an affect that can be life changing.

Many years have passed since the occasion I am about to relate and yet I can still see it as total recall.

A group of crows started showing up each day in my woods and I laid for them with my twenty-two rifle.

Within minutes I had a dead crow at my feet and as every crow hunter knows if you position a dead crow on top of a fence post it acts as a decoy to the rest of the quarrel and if you are clever and remain well concealed you can keep shooting and wipe out the entire flock.

I placed the crow on top of the post and took up my position, rifle at the ready.

A single crow began calling and soon it flew down and landed near the dead crow. I took aim but something kept me from pulling the trigger.

In retrospect I know what that something was.

The crow hopped closer to the fencepost where the dead bird sat still as, well, death and then it flew up to a branch of a nearby tree. A distance of four or five feet separated the dead from the living.

The visitor cocked its head and gazed at the inanimate bird as it began to cluck and croon. It flew near the dead bird several times as though attempting to drive it to flight but, sad to say, dead birds do not fly.

Eventually I left and returned to the house but later I looked and the mourning crow was still there, slouched, crouching there in its black funeral attire, crooning and whispering so sorrowfully.

I believed then and believe now that the mourning crow was the dead crow’s mate.

On the third day I went out and buried the crow that I had destroyed, only then did the mourning crow leave.

Our actions and the results of those actions can impact us in profound ways. So it was with the mourning crow.

That was the last crow I ever shot.

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