Crow family

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For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Fables of Bitpah by Anonymous Translated by Abdullah Ibn Al-Makafa and Joseph Harris Section 50 The Ravens and the Owls Chapter 5 That we ought always to distrust our enemies and be, if possible, perfectly informed of whatever passes among them.

We are now, said Dabshalem, most excellent man, come to the fifth chapter which is to prove that no person of judgment and discretion ought to hope for friendship from his enemies.

Teach me, therefore, most venerable sage, since I must never expect good offices from them, which way to avoid their treasons.

When they make a show of friendship, it is only to cover their evil designs.

Whoever confides in the enemy, believe me, will be deceived, like the owl in the fable which I am going to recite to your majesty.

Fable 1 The Ravens and the Owls In the northwest parts of Zamardo, continued Bitpah, there is a mountain whose top reaches above the clouds, and near the top of this mountain there once stood a tree whose boughs seemed to reach heaven, and these boughs were all laden with the nests of a vast number of ravens, who were all the subjects of a king called Berose.

One night the king of the owls, who was called Shabahar, that is to say, fly by night, came at the head of his army, for the birds of that nation are all under the government of their particular monarchs, to plunder the ravens' nests, against whom he had an ancient hatred.

when they heard this they picked up and took him before the sultan to whom they said we found this fellow lying in the street and he attributes his involuntary presence in our town to so singular a circumstance that we thought you should hear his story konguru was then bidden to repeat his statement which he did adding the remark that much as he had suffered he still held to his opinion that mawewe was his rightful sultan this of course made a very favourable impression and the sultan said you have more sense than all the rest of your tribe put together i guess you can stay here and live with us so expressing much gratitude, settled down, apparently, to spend the remainder of his life with the kites.

One day his neighbors took him to church with them, and when they returned home they asked him, Who have the best kind of religion, the kites or the crows? To which crafty old Kunguru replied, with great enthusiasm, Oh, the kites, by long odds! this answer tickled the kites like anything and kangaroo was looked upon as a bird of remarkable discernment when almost another week had passed the sultan of the crows slipped away in the night went to his own town and called his people together Tomorrow, said he, is the great annual religious festival of the kites, and they will all go to church in the morning.

Go now and get some wood and some fire and wait near their town till I call you.

Then come quickly and set fire to the church.

The crows were very busy indeed all that night, and by dawn they had an abundance of wood and fire at hand and were lying in wait near the town of their victorious enemies.

So in the morning every kite went to church.

There was not one person left at home except old Kunguru.

When his neighbors called for him, they found him lying down.

Yes, that's a bird species, not just a weirdly horny Christmas ballet, and are capable of pattern recognition, planning, and tool use.

One species of corvid can even recognize itself in a mirror.

And a glaive is a polearm with a single-edged blade at the end.

That's the weapon that the leader of the bandit troop that ambushes Galva in the beginning fumbles with when he's fighting against the Corvid.

And if I'm not mistaken, there's like illustrations of like seven or eight glaives in some D&D player's handbook with different hooks and cutting edges.

So, oh yeah, yeah.

when they heard this they picked up and took him before the sultan to whom they said we found this fellow lying in the street and he attributes his involuntary presence in our town to so singular a circumstance that we thought you should hear his story konguru was then bidden to repeat his statement which he did adding the remark that much as he had suffered he still held to his opinion that mawewe was his rightful sultan this of course made a very favourable impression and the sultan said you have more sense than all the rest of your tribe put together i guess you can stay here and live with us so expressing much gratitude, settled down, apparently, to spend the remainder of his life with the kites.

One day his neighbors took him to church with them, and when they returned home they asked him, Who have the best kind of religion, the kites or the crows? To which crafty old Kunguru replied, with great enthusiasm, Oh, the kites, by long odds.

this answer tickled the kites like anything and kangaroo was looked upon as a bird of remarkable discernment when almost another week had passed the sultan of the crows slipped away in the night went to his own town and called his people together Tomorrow, said he, is the great annual religious festival of the kites, and they will all go to church in the morning.

Go now and get some wood and some fire and wait near their town till I call you.

The crows were very busy indeed all that night, and by dawn they had an abundance of wood and fire at hand and were lying in wait near the town of their victorious enemies.

So in the morning every kite went to church.

There was not one person left at home except old Kunguru.

When his neighbors called for him, they found him lying down.

That's right.

Well, Curtis, what about you? What Jays and other Corvids do you have in your yard and your customers? What are they also seeing?

Yeah, so our region is pretty rich for lots of corvids from Clark's Nutcrackers, Stellar's Jay, American Crow.

We've got the Black-billed Magpie, of course, the Canada Jay.

It's like a child.

It really is.

I mean, and that's, that is what I love about Corvids is they, there is sort of a, you know, there's this adolescence combined with intelligence, which is, you know, kind of fascinating and remarkable.

But, you know, here it seems like everybody is, you know, has a crow that's learning how to say hello to them or, you know, bringing them gifts and all sorts of stuff.

Of course.

Rooks and ravens and stuff like that.

Ravens.

Of course.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Some kind of, some kind of Corvid has entered the chat.

Is it Corvid? Is that?

Yes.

Yeah,

They're not immediately put off by my unnatural presence.

I can address only one animal family at a time, such as Canidae, Corvidae, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, I don't have three dots on animals, so that's not important.

I talk to animals.