‘Hello?’
‘Sorry? Did you…?’
‘Speak? Yes.’
‘But you’re…?’
‘A crow. Yes.’
‘How…?’
‘Right now ‘why’ is more pressing.’
Jim Pale stood back. This was a joke. Some teen’s trick. Or one of those TV shows making a fool of him.
‘I’m neither a trick nor spoof TV.’ The crow sounded quite put out.
‘Did you read my mind?’
‘More your expression. It helps us survive to know what predators think.’
‘I’m not a predator.’
‘Not now you’ve got Lidl and a taste for cottage pie but it’s not that long ago you ate my ancestors. A millennium is nothing in the life of a crow.’
‘You’re not 1000 years old.’
The crow grunted. ‘All I’m saying is I have to be desperate to speak to a human.’
Jim stepped back. ‘Why aren’t you flying?’
The crow sighed. ‘At bloody last. The ‘why’ question.’
‘Look. If you want help, sarcasm is hardly going to encourage it.’
‘It’s in the name, moron. ‘Crow’. It’s what we do. We could have been sneers or eye-rolls but we stuck with crow as the name. It’s suggestive of superiority.’
Jim began to turn away.
‘Oh alright. I’m sorry. Ok? Does that make it better? You’re the dominant bloody species and I’m a sodding bird yet your skin is a thin as an anaemic slug.’

Continue reading: Something To Crow About | TanGental