THE MAN WHO ATE DEAD CROWS
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      Sometimes the unexpected give birth to the unexpected. And this was certainly the case on a cold Winter day in early December when I was slowly jogging around the old horse trail in Washington Park. I always ran in the clockwise direction in order to be aware of anyone else and dogs  on the trail. As I was coming around the curve into the straightaway going South on the West boundary I saw him. I mean; you just could not help but see him! He appeared to be almost seven feet tall, and wearing a short black aviator jacket, black slacks, black army boots, and a flat black cap. The edges of his hair was gray and appeared to be closely cut. But what I noticed the most as I got closer to him was the fishline of dead crows slung over his shoulder. There must have been at least fifty birds all hanging upside down! I could not ever remember seeing one dead crow much less fifty. I have been jogging on this trail for over ten years and I cannot remember seeing a single dead crow! Even in the year of the great bird flu when the huge populations of crows who called the park home were dwindled down from flocks of hundreds to only a scattered few, I do not recall seeing a single dead crow. And so it was, as I got beside him I stopped and greeted him; and he smiled and acknowledged my greeting. After a few small friendly remarks I asked him what was he going to do with the crows. He said that before he would answer my question he was going  to take me a little ways back in history. He asked me:“....were you at Calvary? ....I answered no!....were you at Waterloo? ....I answered no! ....were you at Gibraltar? ....I answered no!....were you at Valley Forge?....I answered no! ....were you at Southhampton?....I answered no! ....were you at Gettysburg?....I answered no! ....were you at San Juan Hill? ....I answered no!....were you at Little Big Horn?....I answered no!....were you at Argonne?.....Normandy? ....Hiroshima? ....Manila? ....Algiers? ....Angola?....Burma? ....Bombay?....Cambodia?....Lagos?.... Soweto?.....Chosin Reservoir?.....Dien Bien Phu?....Tet Offensive?....Somalia? ....Kabul? ....Bagdad?” I answered no!” He smiled softly and said:”....the crows were there! Almost of them are now nameless! Almost all of Them are now faceless! But I know their names and I remember their faces!” Then he took the fishline of crows and spread them on the ground. Tenderly touching each one he called their names: “This is Joseph of Nazarus, this is Mary Magdalene, this is Napoleon Bonaparte, this is Lord Wellington, this is Gene Elliot, this is Due de Crillon, this is George Washington, this is Lord Cornwallis, this is Nathaniel Turner, this is John Floyd, this is George Gordon Meade, this is Robert E. Lee, this is William Rufus Shafter, this is Arsenio Linares, this is Sitting Bull, this is George Armstrong Custer, this is John J. Pershing, this is Georg von der Marwitz, this is Dwight D. Eisenhower, this is  Gerd von Rundstedt, this is Paul Tibbets, this is Shunroku Hata, this is Emilio Aguinaldo, this is George Dewey, this is Larbi Ben M'Hidi, this is François Mitterrand, This is Holden Roberto, this is António de Spínola, this is Aung San, this is Orde Wingate , this is Mahatma Gandhi, this is Lord Willingdon, this is King Norodom Sihanouk, this is Pol Pot, this is Obafemi Awolowo, this is Anthony Eden, this is Nelson Mandela, this is F. W. de Klerk, this is Song Shi-Lun, this is Oliver Smith, this is Christian de Castries, this is  Võ Nguyên Giáp, this is William C. Westmoreland, etc. ....The crows were there! The  crows carry the spirits of the ancestors because it is coded into their DNA. The crows are timeless because they have been here before there was a beginning ....and they will be here forever. The crows can tell you the given names of the first humans to walk upright. The crows can tell you when war began;  the places of all the wars and who fought in them! They know the names and faces of the first philosophers, the first scientist, the first teachers, the first religions, the first gods! The crows can tell you where language began, the first books written and who wrote them. You have only to listen to them speak as they talk among themselves and you will begin to understand the wisdom of the crows”. I asked him if he was going to take the dead crows to a place of worship where their bodies could be properly anointed and given a sacred burial? He said no! They deserve to be honored in a more meaningful way! I asked him: In what way are you going to honor them? .... And he replied: “I am going to eat them!....I am going to eat them!” I was somewhat taken aback and I repeated “eat them!” He said “yes, I eat dead crows!” Man! I said in astonishment, I have never met anyone who ate dead crows! Well he said “....now you have.”                                                                                 End