I honestly hope I can give this story my best, but every time I think about it, I start to cry all over again. Let me begin by telling that we have several ravens living on our ranch. They stick together as family units. I have watched three babies taking their first flight lessons from a parent with one nearly crashing. I have seen the adult birds torment the dogs and I have seen the parent birds love and comfort their young.
Ravens are large birds. Walking on the ground, the adult birds are often two feet tall with strong, thick black beaks and shiny black feathers. Their tails form a fan as they fly. They are quite different from black birds, in size and shape. I have never figured out how to tell the mama birds from the papa birds. They all look alike to me. The babies are distinguishable from the parents only early on because their feathers are not completely filled out. Once that happens, I cannot tell mom from pop or sister from brother.
We have had one of the older birds pester one of our dogs for several years. The dog, part Rottweiler and part Jack Russell terrier based on how she boing-boings in the brush going after rabbits, plays with the raven. The raven will dive bomb the dog and fly to the top of the arena rail, well within reach of the dog, but flap up to the top of the barn roof when the dog gets too close. The raven caws at the dog and the dog barks at the bird while they chase each other from fence post to roof top for an hour or so before the dog gives up and lays down in the sun. It is all in fun and ends that way.
Something happened yesterday that was not so fun. I heard the ravens cawing from the back of the house. They were making a great racket and the cawing was insistent. I went to the kitchen window and looked out into the dog yard in front of the house. Our Great Pyrenees was laying in the dirt on her sternum with her head down across her front legs. There were three ravens hopping from the trees to the fence and down to the ground on the outside of the yard fencing. They were agitated and terribly upset. I looked closer at Piper, the Pyrenees. Beside her, I could see a mound of black. My heart sunk. The three ravens were very agitated. One was snapping branches off one of the trees with its beak!
I walked outside into the dog yard to be sure. That pile of black became clear as I got closer. It was a raven and from the position of its neck, it was dead. I walked closer and stooped to pick it up. The dog jumped to her feet and grabbed her prize in her mouth. I yelled at her and tried to pry her mouth open. I heard the low growl from deep inside her. I let go. She was doing her job and protecting the ranch from whatever did not belong there. She also weighs almost as much as I do. I yelled at the dog and she dropped her prize. I grabbed her collar and led her to a fenced area away from the bird and locked her in it. I went back to the bird. The three ravens outside the fence continued their raucous cawing and agitated behavior.
I picked up the dead bird and cradled it gently in my arm. It was still warm from life, but there was no life left in it. I walked outside the dog’s area and found a pile of dead branches and leaves my brother raked up, ready to haul away. I gently placed the bird on a bed of pine needles and arranged it in a lifelike manner and backed away.
The three birds stopped some of the cawing and flew to the ground close to the pile of pine needles. I went back inside the kitchen and watched through the kitchen window. The bird I watched breaking branches off the tree with its beak flew to the top of the fence and dropped to the ground. One of the other birds joined it. They walked alongside the fence line on the outside and hopped on a tree stump.
One of the birds put its neck around the other bird’s. The other bird wrapped that bird in his wings as if comforting it. The cawing was more muted, almost like crying. I have never heard those sounds from the ravens on the ranch before.
The tears began to flow. I could not stop crying. Those two birds were grieving for their dead companion. It was so obvious. They were heartbroken. They comforted each other and walked on the ground around the dead bird for a while. One flew off, leaving the other behind. The third bird hopped from the fence to the ground on the outside of the yard several times.
The remaining bird finally flew to the fence top and dropped into the yard and walked to the area where I found the dead one. It pecked at the ground like it was smelling it and jumped back to the fence top and to the tree above the dead bird. It never left that spot for the balance of the night as far as I know. I saw the bird walking around the dead bird at 5 a.m. the next morning as I prepared the coffee maker for the morning coffee. It made me cry all over again.
As I understand it, ravens mate for life. If the bird who died was the male of a pair, it was the female bereft of a husband. If it was the female, it was the male bereft of a wife. If it was one of their children, it was a parent who lost a child. I am not an ornithologist, so I do not know, but what I do know is those birds lost someone dear to them and they grieved the same way humans do. Like humans they move on because they must. They hunt to eat. They build nests to raise young. But losing a family member is heartbreaking, no matter what species. I think the ravens are closer to us than we understand. They grieve loss of another of their family the same way we do. We will give the dead bird a decent burial and tears are still flowing as I write this. May he or she rest in peace and meet me at Rainbow Bridge when my time to cross comes. I’ll listen for the caw, caw.
