Just a Crow

By Monica Healy

In this world of constant upheaval, it has never been more important to find joy. Last weekend, on a walk, my husband and I took turns enumerating the little things in life that bring us joy: kites on a beach, the laughter of a small child, flowers blooming in the cracks of a sidewalk.

I asked our followers to list the things that brought them joy, and their responses brought me to tears. Happy tears, rolling down my face as the simple, beautiful, poignant, and sometimes poetic responses reminded me of how much goodness remains in a world that often seems shrouded in bleak darkness. Each response was like sunshine breaking through the clouds after a storm. The resulting rainbow was incredibly cathartic.

Earlier this week, I was reminded that the opposite is also true. What might have been a small sadness in a more functional world brought me to my knees.

On an evening walk, I headed to the harbor, just over a mile from my temporary home. Close to the water’s edge is a stand of tall trees, often filled with cranes and crows. That particular evening, I heard the cacophony of a murder of crows overhead. Rounding a corner, I spotted a young crow—a stick trailing between his feet as he awkwardly hopped. As I got closer and he didn’t fly upon my approach, I knew there must be something wrong.

I knelt next to the creature, and even as I looked for the source of his troubles, I was struck by his beauty. The black feathers down his back gleamed with a midnight blue up close, his dark eyes blinking at me as he watched me reach for him. The stick trailing between his feet was wound with fishing wire, as were his feet. Leaving my new crow friend briefly, I found a fisherman close by and enlisted his help.

I explained what I’d seen and asked if the fisherman had a pair of scissors in his tackle box I could borrow. He not only produced a small pair of scissors, but also offered to help. He put a towel around the crow and held him while I cut the line off the stick, freeing him from that impediment.

The line around his feet was a bit trickier. I was wary of hurting the crow, but as I maneuvered his talons to try to unwind the line, it was clear the crow was either unafraid or too tired to protest. I cut him free of as much of the fishing line as I could with the fisherman’s scissors. The fisherman deemed him good to go and went back to his post at his fishing pole.

I considered walking away at that point. Surely I had done my good deed for the day, and I could rest easy knowing that I had done something to help this beautiful creature. I knelt down again and stroked the head and neck adorned with those gleaming blue-black feathers. The crow blinked long and slow and seemed to lean into my touch.

Water. Maybe he just needed some water.

I picked up my little patient, and the cacophony of the crows in the trees overhead grew louder. Just a little ways away was a restroom and a drinking fountain. I dug an empty iced tea bottle out of the garbage nearby, rinsed it out, put water in the cap, and placed it in front of the crow.

As he sat, slow-blinking and not drinking, I took out my phone. I made a number of calls: wildlife rescues, animal hospitals, veterinarians. Each person I reached was sympathetic, but none could take an injured crow. Finally, I was directed to call the non-emergency police line.

After giving the woman on the line the pertinent information, including my name and phone number, I was told that if help could be rendered, I would receive a call. She abruptly hung up as she said she was getting a 9-1-1 call.

At that point, I had made up my mind that I was going to take the crow home. How could I leave him? I started to walk back home, planning to get in my car and come back to retrieve the crow. I would keep him overnight and take him to an animal rescue in the morning.

I hadn’t gone far when my phone rang. It was animal control. She listened to the story, said she was close by, and told me she would come and check on the crow.

So I turned around and went back to the harbor. By the time I got there, animal control had just arrived. She inspected the little guy, got a better pair of scissors from a kit in her truck, and held the crow as I carefully clipped the rest of the fishing line from around his talons.

The woman from animal control moved him to a large bush under the trees where his crow family was still perched, set out some dry food for him, and said that she would be back to check on him in the morning. With that, it seemed there was nothing left for me to do except go home.

The next morning, I rode my bike to the harbor to check on him. As I neared the stand of trees, I noted the absence of cawing and hoped that meant my little friend had recovered and moved on with his murder of crows. But I reached the bush where he had been left the night before and let out a gasp.

My young crow friend, to whom I had already grown attached, didn’t make it through the night. His lifeless body was on the grass, his talons curled and ants already marching around his glassy, sightless eyes. I stifled a sob and left.

What more could I do?

The rest of that day, and now into the next, I can’t stop thinking about that crow. The way his feathers felt like brushed silk beneath my fingers. The gleams of blue on black in the waning sunlight. The way his family watched over him.

When did the murder of crows leave? Did one of them fly down to check on him? Do they somehow just know? Crows are known to be highly intelligent and social creatures. Is there a mother crow in mourning? Another young crow left without a wingman?

I tried to shake off the heavy sadness that enveloped me.

It’s just a crow, right?

It’s just a crow.

Just a crow in a world steeped in cruelty and grief.

It’s “just an immigrant.”

“Just a gardener.”

“Just a dishwasher.”

“Just another single mom.”

“Just an old man.”

The crow only touched my life briefly, but his story intermingles with the countless other stories we have all heard recently. Stories of loss. The deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine—killed last month by ICE agents. The children in Dilley separated from their families, for whom the Singing Resistance wrote and sings a song every night at 7:00 p.m.: “Sing Down These Walls.”

Renee Good and Alex Pretti, gunned down on the streets of my hometown in Minneapolis seven months ago, for whom justice is yet to come. The countless people whose lives are harder because of the loss of health care, SNAP benefits, a job, or family connections because of the cruelty of this administration.

My sadness over the crow is real, and I would mourn him no matter what the world around me was like. When I was 19, I was driving to my job out in the country in South Dakota and hit a bird with my car. I had to pull over—not to check my car, but because I couldn’t see through my tears. Having a veterinarian come to my home last October to euthanize a beloved cat was among the hardest things I’ve done and among the times I’ve cried the hardest.

So, no, it’s not out of the ordinary for me to feel sadness over the death of a creature. But this crow feels like a symbol—one more loss in a sea of grief, where the waves threaten to drag me under. A loss of innocence. A loss of beauty. A loss of joy.

How long can we all go on in such sadness? How much grief can we be expected to bear? How much cruelty can we continue to witness before we break?

I don’t know what the answer is. My guess is that it is different for each person.

Yesterday was the first day in a long time when I had an almost overwhelming urge to leave this country. To flee. To be somewhere that isn’t mired in whatever we are in right now—I don’t even know what to call it; I just know that it isn’t good.

After the election in November 2024, I vacillated between disbelief, panic, grief, rage, and overwhelming sadness. In the wee hours of the morning, I researched places where my family could go to escape the horrors I knew were coming. My husband works for a company with international ties. I can teach internationally. We have the means to move. We are fortunate.

I texted my young adult children around 3:00 a.m. with ideas. There was no way we would leave without them. If this was going to work, they had to be on board. Our middle child, then 24, put on the brakes.

“We live in Minnesota. This is a good state. And if we leave, who will be left to fight for all those who stay?”

Oof. Nothing like a piece of humble pie when your 24-year-old speaks such words of wisdom and pathos.

So we stayed. And I took up the mantle of what has now become full-time activism. And I don’t regret it. It has been heartening to see the resistance grow. To be joined by others who don’t have to be personally impacted by this regime’s cruelty in order to care about it happening to others.

But sometimes—it’s just hard.

Losing the crow was hard.

It was a reminder of all that we’ve already lost and how much more hardship there is yet to come.

So I researched how to attract crows to my yard. I’m determined to befriend them. To make them feel safe. To make them feel loved.

Just like my work as an activist. I want the people of this world to feel safe. To feel loved. To feel a sense of belonging.

I may have lost the crow.

But I kept my heart.

I hope you are finding joy every day. And I also hope that you are letting yourself feel sadness. Those feelings — diverse as they may be — are exactly what make us human. You have all made this a great community; a safe space to commune with others who recognize the incongruity of joy in a time of sorrow. Feel free to share here — both ends of the emotional spectrum. What do you find most heartbreaking? What is bringing you joy?

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