I've been keeping up my exercise routine and diet pretty well over the last couple of months. I seem to be keeping the weight off rather than losing very much over the last few weeks, but that's still a result. We've found a new route for a 40 minute run that takes us out of town, past meadows and a field of horses to the next village along. It's all rather pleasant if you can ignore the running for 40 minutes part of it all (tragically I am actually looking forward to getting back to London so I can do my 70 minute run between the bridges of the Thames).
Six days ago I noticed a large dead crow on the grass verge outside someone's home. I don't know what had brought it down, perhaps it had been hit by a car or had had a heart attack or had perished due to some disease of the cloaca. But it was sad and slightly shocking to see it lying there: the crow is an historically sinister bird and it did send a bit of a visceral chill through me. It lay there, looking at me. Was it about to come back to life and fly into my face and peck out my eyes. After Histor and Pliny you could understand why the crow community might be priming itself for a revenge attack. We'd made them look silly, frivolous and egg-obsessed, when in fact they are hugely serious, terrifying, mini-dinosaurs.
Given it's proximity to housing (there was a one track road in between but it would still greet people as they left their homes) I assumed the crow would be gone two days later on my next run, but it was still there, in the exact same awkward position as if trying to lift itself off of the ground with one of its wings. There were a few flies buzzing around it, but otherwise it looked intact and like it might reanimate at any second. If I lived nearby I would have dug a hole and hidden this scary cadaver, but the people here were made of stronger stuff (or maybe were too scared to go anywhere near it). It looked so fresh after two days in the summer sun (ha) that I even wondered if it might just be another crow that had died in the same spot.
Today, two days on, I really didn't expect to see the crow again. Surely it would have been dealt with by now. Or a dog or a fox or an eagle or a griffin would have carried it off for dinner. But it was STILL there, still in the same position and still impossibly looking like it had just fallen from the sky. I didn't get up close to look at it, but this cursed bird seemed to have been left alone by man and beast (the flies still buzzed around, but maybe those were just demons who were there to protect the crow Beelzebub if anyone dared get too near) and to not have decomposed at all. I suppose feathers stay fairly untouched by rot and maybe if I had stuck my hand up the bird's cloaca (as I did so often with Histor) that I would have found putrid and stinking bird innards. But perhaps the bird will never rot away and perhaps no one will ever think to bury it or throw it in a binbag or just move it somewhere further from their house. How has it stayed in the exact same position untouched by nature's rotting finger for almost a week?
I will be glad to move back to the town where superstition is banished and where such devilish magick can no longer occur.
