First Crow, First Raven, First Human, the stories…First Campfire The sound of the humans teeth chattering on the ground below irritated Raven, and he couldn’t sleep…
Tan Me Hide and Teach Me to Sew …well before the first human took a bite of the first apple from the Tree of Knowledge
The Still Driven to drink from the Garden of Eden….
Let Them Eat Corn …..humans grew smarter and smarter, while Crow and Raven grew wiser and wiser…
The newspaper article below inspired my new short story, The Judas Crow. It’s a rather ghastly account of humans using an animal for sport killing of its own kind.
I imagined what might be like to be inside the mind of the Judas Crow—having no idea about Judas or Jesus or betrayal on a scale it seems only our species is capable.
In The Judas Crow, a ‘small human’—do crows recognize our small ones as our children? do they recognize gender?—nurses an injured crow back to health, brings him food and water, and encourages him to fly again.
The Judas Crow spends many days in a cage, longing for the freedom of the skies and to be re-united with what is left of his family. He wills his broken wing to fly again, never imagining for a moment the act of betrayal he is being tricked and enticed into.
The scoundrel!
What exactly would the title “Judas Crow” mean to the crow? Guilt at delivering one’s own kin to their deaths? —a human invention that ought to apply to crows as well as to humans?
It wasn’t easy, this mind-meld with a species not my own. But we know from scientific research that crows perceive, feel, form bonds with one another, and grieve at the death of a loved one, so we have at least this kinship with them.
I wonder what do we look like to them? Do they think we are intelligent? Or sentient? Care about our fellow humans? Do they see the carnage we humans enact upon other humans and yet do not eat them? Moments after death, all animals are meat. Are they astonished at this waste?—what other reason would one kill another animal, if not for its meat?
Who is the scoundrel here? The Judas Crow, or the humans who created him?
It’s in the eye of the beholder, I reckon. But perhaps we should take another lesson from the animal world. You kill to eat, to go on living.
Not just for the hell of it.
I love crows. They inspired me to write a fictional book about them. In doing so, I learned that they are smarter than our species gives them credit for. A lot smarter. They plan dream, love, raise new generations. And they notice us.
But they don’t make art. We do. And we make a lot of it about them.
Though some fear and loathe crows, many of us honor and revere them as intelligent, sentient, creatures; to some of us crows are a source of inspiration. Stroll through my Gallery of Crow Art in its many forms, from famous as well as unknown artists, poets, and writers, living and dead.
Paleolithic Cave Art
My interpretation of this cave painting: a crow on a perch overlooks a fatal encounter between a human and a big beast. Gored by a spear from this upstart Tool-maker, the beast prepares to impale the naked, hairless human on his horns, while his guts pour out onto the Earth. The crow is waiting for dinner. If it’s not about the Food Chain, it’s just not that important.
Or is it? Many believe the Lascaux cave paintings are star maps of Gemini, Orion, Taurus and Sirius.
Wheatfield with Crows, Vincent van Gogh, July 1890
Art historians believe Wheatfield with Crows-painted just weeks before his death-was van Gogh’s last work.
“Crows interest themselves in everything, and observe everything. The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird.”—Jules Michelet, a favorite author of Van Gogh
Woman with Crow, Pablo Picasso, 1904
Picasso painted Woman with Crow during his Blue Period, at about the same time he moved to Paris. The portrait features Marguerite Luc, whom he knew as Margot kissing and caressing a crow. Margot was the step-daughter of a cafe Picasso frequented.
Georgia O’Keeffe, painted crows too. More than once. She painted Canyon with Crows during the time she lived in Texas and depicts Palo Duro Canyon, whose Permian-aged iron-rich ‘red beds’ became the focal point of the painting. Just before your eyes jump to the crows flying in freedom above the red rocks.
After O’Keeffe returned to New York, she painted Lake George with Crows.
Oil paint, real feather. Wish it were mine.
The crow is in the painting, the feather is on our side of the canvas. That’s how my imagination works too. Crows step back and forth between it and the world of physical reality. I find their feathers everywhere…
Another unabashed crow-lover:
Kristin Fouquet’s photograph, Two Crows, graces the cover of Full of Crow – “an independent online literary magazine that publishes poetry, fiction, flash, reviews, interviews, articles, art, photography, and more…”
I could go on. And on and on and on….about the ways and means that crows have inspired our species. But do go ahead and continue looking…Google ‘crow art’ – 62,400,000 hits.
Mary C Simmons ... Art and Word 
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