Chapter Fifty-Three

FOR MY NEXT CROW-THEMED COLUMN, I’m covering the December town hall meeting. The crows have been brought up in other ones, I’m sure, but this month the entire meeting is dedicated to a sole purpose: deciding how to get the crows out of Auburn.

I don’t have a ride. Liam is at practice, and it’s Sofia’s mom’s birthday, so she couldn’t leave. So I ask Campbell for help, and I bike. Three miles. In December. But it’s a dry night, and it isn’t terribly cold, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask my parents for a ride. All of our recent wounds are too painful.

I arrive at the municipal building, hot under my sweater and winter coat from the exertion. I lean Campbell’s bike against a tree and strip down to my T-shirt. A flash of black right next to me catches my eye, and I turn to face a single crow perched on the edge of the curb just inches away from me. He’s the only one on the street.

A cigarette dangles from his beak.

“You should quit,” I tell him as I walk past. “Those things will kill you.”

When I get inside, the meeting has just started, so I slip into the back of the room and lean against the wall, pen and notepad poised.

“Last crow hunt was a complete failure, anyway,” says a man in a uniform. The game warden.

“How many crows did we get at the first shoot?” asks a member of the town council from the front of the room.

“Ahh, that was . . . six hundred and thirty-three.”

“And this last hunt?”

“None, sir.”

“I’m sorry, did you say none?”

“No birds.”

“How is that possible? We had, what, thirty hunters register for it, right?”

“Well, we got out into the fields and the crows flew too high. Like they knew how high we could fire. Like they remembered.”

I make a note to ask my ornithologist about it. They probably did remember.

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” the game warden concludes. I bet he’d love to hear about Joe’s gifts.

The council member rubs the space between his eyes. I don’t recognize him, but a few of the others are notable Auburn residents. Bill DiMarco is up there, but as a citizen, not representing the police force. So is the principal of the elementary school. One of the school librarians. In a town this small, civil servants usually have to pull double duty or more to fill all the seats. These are the men who would be evaluating my scholarship essay.

“So, the hunts are useless. I don’t see any other options left than to pay for wildlife experts to come in and use more extreme measures.”

A murmur rustles through the crowd. The hundred or so residents who bothered to show up look like mourners, all dressed in their black winter coats.

“We have the option to contract out—these people have dealt with large bird concentrations before. They’ll use flares, flashes, and noise. The idea is to try to overwhelm them so much that they leave. It will be expensive. It will be loud. And on that note, I open the floor to comments.”

A woman near the front stands first.

“The crows are in the trash every day. On every street. The whole neighborhood smells. They’ve memorized the trash days.”

Mr. DiMarco leans forward to his microphone. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but what do you mean, they’ve memorized the days?”

“I mean that our street has trash collection Monday, so the crows come Monday and wait for the garbage men to open the cans, and then they attack the bags in the truck and pull anything left in the garbage cans out. On Tuesday, the crows are waiting on Maple Street. On Wednesday—”

“I understand, thank you,” Bill DiMarco says, shaking his head. I think he doesn’t believe her. His facial expression is mirthful, like he’d laugh at her if it were appropriate to do so, or like he might laugh at her anyway.

His condescension makes me dislike him more.

A man just across from me stands next.

“The crows killed my cat,” he says. “Cornered the poor thing near my garage. Pecked it to death.”

Another murmur in the crowd.

“Did you see this?” a councilman asks.

“No. But I’m sure it was the birds.”

“Let’s try to stick to things we’ve seen, arguments in favor of or against releasing these funds.”

A small woman stands, and I recognize our neighbor, Mrs. Stieg. I guess I could have asked her for a ride.

“Those birds have wreaked havoc on my roses,” she says.

Oh no, not the precious roses.

“Did you see this?” a council member asks.

“I did. The first time was in September, when they’d just started arriving. I woke up at dawn and saw them tearing one of my prize-winning rosebushes into pieces, snapping the branches and plucking the petals off the blooms. I’d just almost lost another bush, and then this one was completely destroyed.”

I remember the ruined bush that I saw when we walked to school, how I thought it must have been Campbell, angry and resentful about Mrs. Stieg’s unkind words to us that weekend. I was so sure it was her, but I was wrong. It was the crows. But why would the crows ruin a rosebush?

“And then a few weeks later, one more bush! Gone! Do you have any idea how many years it takes to cultivate a rose garden like mine? The dedication to each plant? And those horrible birds have spent all autumn tearing down my plants.”

“I’m very sorry to hear about . . . your flowers.”

“Well, I say we bring in any experts we can find. Get rid of the damn nuisances once and for all,” Mrs. Stieg says, and then she sits down. A few people clap for her.

“Okay, I think we’ve heard enough. On the table is Town Ordinance 4420, proposed on this date, the ninth of December, to approve a budget to contract out for crow eradication. All those against the ordinance say nay.”

There is silence in the room.

“Nay!” I call out, and everyone turns to look. Then they turn back. One nay.

“All those in support say aye.”

People yell their ayes. They stand and shout it. Some of them shuffle on the floor or raise their arms. One person climbs on his seat.

The ayes have it.

I bolt from the room, my sneakers squeaking on the shiny tiles as I run. I burst through the door and suck in the cold night air. The street in front of me is filled with crows. A few hundred, at least. They are facing the door to the municipal building. Cawing, cawing. They are so loud, cawing over each other, yelling like the people inside, and suddenly I don’t hear caws. I hear nays. “Nay!” scream the crows in their dark feathers outside. “Aye!” scream the people in their dark coats inside. Mirror images of each other.

If the crows could vote, the nays would’ve won.