Cain had mercilessly killed his brother Abel and was carrying the corpse on his shoulders, unable to decide how and where to hide the body so he wouldn't be caught out by his parents, Adam and Eve. Never before had he been faced with such a daunting task, and now he felt lost. Looking around him as he bore the weight of the corpse, he tried to come up with a solution, but his mind was too limited to be of much use.
It was late, and the sky was turning dark; Cain felt that his chance to resolve the situation was rapidly disappearing, when he spotted a crow flying low toward him. At first, he thought it was a hallucination, but then as the crow flew closer, Cain could clearly see that he was carrying what seemed like a dead crow in his beak. Gracefully, the bird circled in the air, and just as gracefully he landed nearby. Slowly and gently, he let the dead crow roll out of his beak onto the ground, and he proceeded to dig into the earth with his powerful claws. Once the hole was deep enough, the crow used his beak to push the corpse in and began to cover the dead bird with the soil he had dug up only a few moments earlier.
Cain watched the crow in utter amazement, wondering how it was possible that a simple, common bird could be so much smarter than he was! Immediately he followed the bird's example and buried his slain brother in the ground, leaving no trace behind for his parents to ever stumble upon.
Unbeknown to Cain, people need guidance in almost all tasks they face on earth, and the simple crow had been assigned to teach this lowest of acts: grave digging.