The crows

I'm going to deviate from my chronicles of raising bees and write about a funny thing that happened to us on our little farm in the city.  I own about a half acre of property in NYC, well, its really Staten Island but technically its NYC.  We have apple trees, a pear tree, plum trees and vegetable gardens, plus numerous flowers gardens and elderberry, strawberry, blueberry and raspberry bushes.  keeps me sane in the big city.  Our house has a 10X24 foot screened porch which is really our living room for most of the year.  One Sunday morning as my wife and I were enjoying our coffee whilst looking at our accomplishments in the back yard, I saw something hopping along the bushes.  It was black and a first I thought it was a cat, but the hopping confused me.  Then I heard a crow call of distress.  I realized the hopping thing was a baby crow and my thoughts went back to my youth when my dad had caught a crow and tamed it for us as a pet. It could even say a few words.  So I told my wife that I was going to catch it, so I went out to where I had last seen it and started my hunt.  I soon found it under some low grass and snuck up behind it and made my lunge.  With bird in hand I brought it back to the back steps and tried to calm it, which I slowly did.  By this time the mother crow had begun an alert call for help and slowly the sky began to fill with circling crows all blaring loudly.  We thought that this was great as the church next door would be getting out soon and the sky would be full of circling birds all screaming loudly.  We laughed.  Finally the mood changed as more and more crows showed up, now approaching several hundred, and my wife said we had to let it go.  Reluctantly I agreed and took the now calm bird to where I found it and said goodbye.  Goodbye or not, the crows decided to take roost in my back yard for the next three days and every time I went outside they began screaming at me, which made my wife and daughter laugh wildly.  Finally they left  and life became routine again with weeding and other such mundane things.  Later