Chapter 2: The Murder at Kingsley Manor

Oceano, California

May 6, 2004

He was exactly one year old on this day, though he did not know that as he had no concept of birth anniversaries. He weighed 484 grams, just a little bit more than a pound. He was small for his age, undersized and scrawny, and a bit of an outcast in the murder he was a part of. His body and head were covered in jet black feathers as dark as midnight but with a slight iridescence of green with a hint of violet when the sun struck them at just the right angle. His beak, which had a few chips and scratches of wear and tear on it, was black too, as were his feet and toes. He was a Corvus brachyrhynchos, better known as a common American crow.

He was pretty close to the bottom of the complex hierarchy within the murder of two hundred and forty-four adult and juvenile crows he was a part of. His parents were still alive but had kicked him out of the nest three weeks before when his mother laid a clutch of six eggs and needed the room to sit on them and care for them. That had left him on his own for the first time in his life, forcing him to learn quickly, to adjust to his new life or die.

This particular murder of common American crows had been present on the Home Hill, as they thought of it among themselves, for more than sixty generations, more than three hundred years in human timekeeping, existing there on the isolated hillside and cliff since long before a structure had been built upon it, since long before the dangerous but bountiful roadway was built, since even before the Spanish missionaries led by Father Junipero Serra had built a mission to convert the Chumas native Americans who had once lived and thrived in the area (and who were all dead now, killed by enslavement, persecution, and diseases they were not immune to). Their behaviors and food sources had changed over the years, but the same basic lineage still existed on the land, defending it and living on it in relative prosperity.

These days, a human nest stood at the very top of Home Hill, a large, imposing nest with a secondary nest next to it. These were the only human structures in the murder’s territory. Ever since it had been constructed two generations before (some of the older crows in the murder still recalled the noise and the machines and the horde of humans that had shown up every day to build the nests) the members of the murder had avoided it as a matter of course. The murder had lived without humans regularly in their territory since the beginning, and now that a human nest was there and humans had been spotted in and around it, they kept their distance. Crows instinctively feared humans, feared them more than the foxes or the hawks or the dreaded night owls that would kill a crow without hesitation if they were caught in the open after the light darkened at the end of the day. They did not know why they feared humans so much—not a single one of them in the history of the murder had ever seen a human harm a crow in any way, or even interact with one—but the fear was primal and undeniable. Humans were dangerous and unpredictable. Every crow knew that almost from the moment they emerged from the egg.

He was different from the other crows, however. He feared humans like any other crow, but he was also a little more adventurous than his peers. He enjoyed flying to the very edge of the murder’s territory, enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny of Home Hill and the surrounding environment. He had flown out over the border between the west edge of the hill and the big water, the very territory the white gulls called their own. He had gone to the top of the sand hill to the south, beyond which there were countless humans riding in noisy wheeled vehicles on the smaller sand hills. He had even gone beyond the highway on the east side of Home Hill, past where the higher members of the murder often gorged themselves on tasty roadkill. He had never tasted roadkill himself (at least not that he remembered—his mother and father used to occasionally feed it to him when he was a hatchling) as he was a mere nest-less juvenile. His usual meals consisted of insects he found near rocks or under trees, worms that came out on the damp mornings when the ocean fog rolled in, and the discarded scraps that the upper echelon of the murder left lying around after eating their own meals. His young life was a constant effort to hold starvation at bay and most of each day was spent in a constant search for something to eat.

That would all change on this day. Unable to find any significant forage on a warm afternoon, he ranged further than he ever had before, flying to the east of Home Hill, across the highway, and out of the murder’s recognized territory. There, perhaps a half mile inland, he found a long stretch of thorny bushes along the bank of a small stream that led into a metal pipe on the east side of the highway and passed under it, reemerging and dumping into a steep channel that led to the big water to the west. Upon these thorny bushes were berries of some sort, the vast majority of them varying shades of green but a few—perhaps one in every one hundred—a reddish purple. He landed on one of the bushes, poking his left front toe on a thorn and drawing a tiny amount of blood. He made a rule in his head to land more carefully if these berries turned out to be something he could eat. He, like most crows, was smart enough to learn from his mistakes.

He tried one of the green berries since they were the most numerous. One bite told him to spit it out. The taste was very sour, the texture dense and difficult to smash with his beak. His instinct told him the green berry was not poisonous, but also that he would likely regurgitate it involuntarily if he swallowed it. That would not curb his hunger. It would only make it worse. He made his way a little deeper into the bush, heading toward one of the reddish purple berries. They were larger and certainly looked more appetizing. Though his sense of smell was only rudimentary, he still possessed such a sense. The reddish purple berries smelled appetizing, unlike the green ones which had no smell at all.

He made a quick scan of the sky, his sharp eyes—they were about 20-6 by human standards, and with the ability to see in the ultraviolet spectrum—searching for the silhouette of a hawk who might try to catch him in the open. The sky was empty. He then scanned the ground nearby, searching for foxes, cats, or raccoons, all of whom would love to make a snack out of even a scrawny crow like himself. Nothing was visible and his finely homed instincts reported no danger. His mind at ease, he leaned forward and took a tentative bite out of the berry.

Immediately his mouth was filled with a wonderful sweetness unlike anything he had ever tasted before. Juices flooded his mouth and stained his beak but he did not care, so amazed was he by the flavor. The reddish purple berries were incredible! And they were big! And they were satisfying to his palate and in his stomach! He quickly ate the entire berry and then hopped over a few branches (carefully keeping his feet and toes away from the thorns) and ate another one. He felt the sucrose in the fruit immediately going to work, giving him energy, felt the complex carbohydrates in the fruit satisfying his persistent hunger—for the moment anyway.

Crows are among the most intelligent animals in the world and he was no exception. He was smart enough to plan for the future. He could not eat all of the sweet berries available on the bushes at one time and he knew that it was possible, even likely, that some other bird or ground creature might happen across these bushes and eat the bounty before he could return for more. He decided to take some of the sweet berries and store them someplace where only he would have access to them. The problem was, he had no such place. He had no nest. On most nights he slept in the top branches of a pine tree on the outskirts of the nesting area the rest of the murder used.

He would just have to find a place, a secret place where other crows did not go, where ground animals or the several varieties of smallbirds who shared Home Hill with them would not be able to sniff them out and steal them. He was able to carry two of the sweet berries at a time—one in his beak and one in his crop—so he picked two of the largest ones and took to the sky, quickly orienting himself by the position of the sun and the direction of the onshore wind. He climbed to three hundred feet above the ground and was able to see the highway and, in the distance, Home Hill itself, including the human nest that sat atop it.

He maintained his altitude as he approached the hill, gliding serenely when he could but often having to flap his powerful wings to fight his way forward in the twelve knot wind that was blowing. He approached from the east-northeast, initially heading for the large grove of trees outside the boundary of the nest structure, a grove that the humans had built a narrow roadway through and had covered in gray asphalt when the nest was built. He did not wish to pass close to the human nest where he might be captured and consumed if he got too close. No one knew for sure that humans would kill and eat crows, but it was best to assume that they would not hesitate to do so if the opportunity presented itself.

But then ... his brain began to think things over a little bit and, though he did not know or understand the concept of thinking outside the box, that is exactly what he did. Other crows avoided the human nest in a manner that was more superstitious than anything else. The humans themselves were only seen infrequently, fleetingly, from far away, just visible enough for the murder to know they were really there. The humans had never come into the grove where the murder nested. They only went outside of and back into their marked territory in the moving nests. Were they really that dangerous? Could he perhaps go into their territory unseen and find a hiding spot for his berries within? It was certainly something worth looking into.

And so, he circled above the human nest, making a left turning lap, staying careful to keep outside of the perimeter fence at first. He saw a large nest that sprawled across the top of the plateau atop the hill. It was not tall but it was broad. There was a minimally slanted roof to the nest, a roof that overhung the main body on all sides. There was natural landscape surrounding the house but it had been altered in multiple places. There was a narrow strip of roadway that led to a small platform on the edge of the cliff. A round cylinder stood upon the platform, its top covered with some kind of brown material broken up with three straight lines that stretched across the middle and at both mid-latitudes. There were several strange objects arranged around the cylinder, their purpose unknown and unknowable without further information. The small roadway led back to the main nesting area. The structure had many things that looked like openings and were covered in the same sort of transparent material that allowed visual inspection of the inside of the moving nests. He had never been close to the material but he had seen it on the highway. It was reflective in certain light and it would kill any crow that came into contact with it. It would allow light through but not crow bodies. He had an instinctive fear of the material.

Just outside the reflective barriers at the front of the nest was a flat platform made of wood or something like wood. There was a railing, also made of wood, that enclosed the perimeter of the platform. Several human made things were arranged on the floor of the platform. There were two shiny metal things on stands, four of the same sorts of small structures that were around the cylinder on the edge of the cliff, and three similar structures that were longer and angulated in the middle. It occurred to him that perhaps the humans perched on those structures. That seemed a logical conclusion but he would need to see some evidence to confirm the notion.

Off to the south of the flat wooden place was another such structure, attached to the first one and surrounded by a smaller version of the black, spiky barrier around the nest area. Enclosed in this space area was a rectangular body of water. He could not tell how deep it was but its presence here was both puzzling and frightening. Crows had great fear of bodies of water big enough to drown them as they were completely incapable of extricating themselves from it if they fell in. He decided to stay well clear of the strange body of water, the likes of which he had never encountered in his short, isolated life.

The sun was sinking in the sky off to the west so he could not see through the clear barriers and into the nest. All he saw was the reflection of the big water and the items on the wooden platform. He would have liked to catch a glimpse of the humans within so he could know how many there were, what they looked like, and what their activities were, but it was impossible currently. He flew on, continuing his left hand circle (Jake Kingsley would have been impressed by his flight pattern had he been watching) until he came around to the back side of the nest, the side away from the big water.

Here there was only a few squares and rectangles covered in the transparent barrier. The area immediately behind the nest featured an extension of the main nest that stretched out to the north. It was this part of the structure where the moving nests emerged with the humans inside. There were five large openings that were currently covered by a metallic barrier. He had once seen one of the barriers rattle open just before a moving nest—a large black one—emerged. Right now, they were all closed, the moving nests not visible.

At the end of the hidey-hole for the moving nests he could see that they were increasing the size. Part of the structure had been removed and the frame of the expansion had been erected. There were no humans present currently, but he realized that they were here at certain times. Lately there had been the sounds of banging and buzzing coming from the direction of the human nest, noises that made the murder uneasy when they heard them. Some days, always two in a row, the noises did not occur, followed by five days when they did. Could it be that the humans building the moving nest hidey-hole extension were responsible for the noises? This made sense in his mind but he would need to actually see the humans working on the nest to be sure.

He dropped down until he was only fifty feet above the top of Home Hill, making his descent on the upwind leg as he headed west back toward the ocean. With a closer vantage point, he examined the human nest again, both surveying the scene for a possible hiding place for his berries and evaluating (as long as he was in the neighborhood) the potential for food to forage. He saw no potential food sources, which he found odd. He had never been close to humans before but his understanding was that they frequently dropped food items anywhere they gathered. He was a little disappointed but still had his primary mission. His sharp eyes spotted a potential hiding spot just as he was about to make his left turn into the crosswind leg of his lap.