Being Dicks to Crows (For Science)

The feathery missile smacked into Jake’s face, and he stumbled, clutching at the mask. It was knocked askew and obscuring his vision, his heavy backpack dragging him off-balance as he tumbled inelegantly to the ground. All around him, a metalocalypse of scolding crows cussed out his mama from every parapet, cornice and corbie-step, their champion dive-bomber ruffling his glossy feathers on the dome of a white-streaked statue. Jake clambered to his feet, re-adjusting his plastic protection, and checked the time on his cell phone. It was 2:43, and Jake picked up the pace as he re-started his count.

Months ago, Jake had been fascinated by Professor Marzluff’s study of crows, their ability to communicate with one another, warn each other of danger, and hold a collective grudge. Marzluff had trapped and released crows while wearing a distinctive mask, and they had spread the word, gossiping among themselves and squawking their displeasure at the mask-wearer over the course of seventeen years. Jake asked his high school science department if they would help him trap and tag crows in order to study the limits of avian forgiveness; how much positive reinforcement it would take to change a bird’s mind about a mask. The request was answered with a firm ‘no’. Actually, it was a sarcastic, ‘yeah, sure, let me grab our magic genie credit card and leprechaun insurance,’ followed by a softer, ‘no, obviously no.’

Without access to humane traps, Jake had set out with his slingshot, disguised as Guy Fawkes. He pelted crows with acorns and sticker balls, failing to anticipate how judgmental the cast figures at the Thurgood Marshall Memorial would be, watching him with separate but equal disdain as the birds slowly turned them all white. As Jake returned to the square, in disguise, day after day at about the same time, leaving offerings of food by way of crow apology, he suspected that even if the birds forgave him, the statues never would. Those carved eyes seemed to know him, marking his return with neither appreciation nor surprise.

At the start of the experiment, Jake’s numbers had been very precise, even noting in detail how many crows berated him for the duration of his trek across the square, and how many lost interest, and took flight. None of them touched the food Jake provided, not while he could see them, and their receptions had only gotten more aggressive, with strafing attacks and remarkably well-timed evacuations that forced Jake to wear a precautionary poncho. That first week’s chart looked so innocent now, with its cute single digit numbers and asterisked notes. Now, Jake could only glance quickly upwards and estimate to the nearest dozen. The murder had reached a gross.

Jake had to keep his head down, keep his guard up, keep his movements neutral. Showing fear would only make the crows bolder, and trying to fight back would be an invitation to open war. Jake had tried to defend himself, once, shouting and swatting at a crow that charged him, and found himself at the center of a feathery tornado, all talons and beaks, and that was the shredded death of his first backpack. He'd carefully kept his arms at his sides ever since.

Just to see the difference, Jake had gone through the square maskless, once. His heartbeat had thudded in his ears as he stepped through the square, the statues watching him with renewed impassivity as he stalked through the shade of a hundred midnight wings. The beady eyes slid away from his naked face, the solemn black beaks sealed shut. The silence clung to that monument like a living thing, hungry, patient, and Jake feared it would swallow him whole. He checked his cell phone. Silent there, too.

Now it was 2:46, and the crazed cawing rattled in Jake’s skull. The plastic inside of Guy Fawkes’s face pressed against a tender spot where the dive-bomber hit, and each hurried sneaker slap against the bricks shot a burst of fire through the blooming bruise. Stashing the mask in his backpack, Jake galloped down the narrow mews to a dockside street, then paused in an alley to get his breath right. He was having trouble remembering what normal breath sounded like.

It was 2:49. The bird calls were soon replaced by a different kind of mindless squawking, and the shrieking laughter of teenage girls ricocheted off the brick facades. Jake took one last deep breath, clutched his cell phone full of tumbleweeds, and pretended not to notice the girls as he walked straight into them.

“Jake?”

All that breath work was useless; Jasmin took it straight away. With her hair pulled back in a red banana, honey cinnamon skin brushed with glitter, a tiny smudge of her mascara in the laugh line of her eye. Jake could never tell between the thousand shades of her lip gloss, not by sight, anyway, but the slick shine conjured up a memory of watermelon kisses under gym class bleachers. Her chewed-short nails, painted thickly in neon colors, had pushed through Jake’s hair as he stumbled through amorous but unintelligible Espanol, and then she'd found a better use for his tongue. Jake tried not to notice how her developing shape and indulgent affection for cheese-sauce tater-tots kept testing the elasticity of her shirt. Actually…Ryan’s shirt.

Jake flashed a hollow smile and shook the hair out of his face. “Oh, hey.”

“What are you doing here?” Jasmin asked, her interchangeable friends giggling in the background.

“Uh, it’s a big town, lots of us live here.” She didn’t need to know how long he’d been practicing that line.

Those pretty eyes frowned, dark hair sliding over Ryan's shirt's shoulder as Jasmin tilted her head to the side. "What happened to your face?"

Jake blushed around the emerging bruise. “Nothing. What are you up to?”

Lifting the glitter-littered poster board in her hand, Jasmin told him, “It’s the protest today.” She bit one of her potentially watermelon-flavored lips. “You know, you should come.”

Should he? Should he walk Jasmin up to the Thurgood Marshall Memorial? Hold her poster board and breathe in her fruity shampoo? Part of Jake leapt at the olive branch, but the rest of him already had plans. “I've got Environmental Club. Oh, you know what, though?” He slid the backpack off one shoulder, dug around until he found the mask. “You should take this.”

Jasmin snorted, her cohorts re-doubling their squeals. “Why do you have that?”

Jake shrugged, the thin plastic digging into his fingers. “Coding Club. The hackers in Anonymous wear them, keep their faces off the web. Or, out of the gazette. That our moms read.”

A twitch of a smile on watermelon lips. “Okay, thanks. If I get pepper-sprayed, it won't mess up my make-up.” She took the mask, her fingers brushing Jake’s hand, and held Guy Fawkes in front of her fragile face. Her sparkling eyes emerged from the leering shell. “It’s really good to see you, Jake. You look good.”

“Uh,” Jake shoved his hands in his pockets, studying his shoes as he fumbled for an un-rehearsed line. He could have stopped her then, taken the mask back, asked her…it was a Misfits shirt, Ryan’s shirt. Possibly still flavored with snuggly whispers, kissed-off lip gloss and shared plates of cheese-sauce tater-tots. Jake stretched a smile across his face. “You look good, too."

Jasmin took a long look over her shoulder as the girls walked on, and Jake set off in the opposite direction, making a point not to look back. His cell phone said it was 2:56. Jake would check it again when he heard the screams.

He was learning quite a lot about forgiveness.