I am more at ease in the company of birds, the generosity of their song and inability to lie.

The peahen knows the show of her mate is just a mask for his insecurity but she loves him all the same. Zebra, sheep, buffalo and honey badger – they know the pleasure of birds, their good deeds and company.

Except the crows.

Don’t be fooled by their larrikin act, raucous joke tellers, attention seekers and self-proclaimed leaders. Once they get you alone they will take all your best ideas and then, while no one is looking, they will pick out your eyes. Following you then from a distance, as you stumble, blind and confused – and when you fall, they’ll keep silent, watch as you die, slowly, from exposure and thirst.

Then they will take your heart.

But today I am filled with an indescribable joy as I stand at the kitchen bench preparing the ingredients for the slow cooker, I look up and out the window to witness two white winged choughs make their way up the garden path. Knife against onion paused, I take in the fact that each bird carries in its beak a large clump of hair the unmistakable grey brown of my own, cropped a few days earlier in an act of therapeutic intervention aimed at keeping hopelessness at bay. The birds have retrieved the hair from under the bush where I had placed it, not knowing I was leaving it there for them.

Next time I will leave a finger, and then an arm, they already have my heart.  

Written and illustrated by Dani Burbrook©