“Ravens are the birds I’ll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead become ravens. I’ve watched these birds so hard I feel their black feathers split out of my skin. To fly from one tree to another, the raven hangs itself, hawklike on the air. I hang myself that same way in sleep, between one day and the next. When we’re young, we think we are the only species worth knowing. But the more I come to know people, the better I like ravens.”
from The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich
Friend or Foe: Corvidae