There is a connection between the three things in the title, I promise, but explaining it will take a while, so bear with me. 

Our two car garage is very full. Not only does it hold two cars (my Bug and Dale’s Mustang) it also holds two bikes, a set of theatre seats from the Capitol Theatre, all of Dale’s tools including a welder, a workbench, a fridge…you get the point, the garage is full. So to help me get in and out (the Mustang only comes out for special occasions), Dale put a parking stop down. It is a wedge-shaped piece of hard rubber that adheres to the garage floor. When you slowly  come in, it stops you in just the right place, so you don’t hit the stuff in the front of the garage but you are far enough in to let the door close safely. I practiced a few times with Dale watching and I parked my Bug perfectly every time.  Well, yesterday after shopping, I came in a little hot and pushed the parking stop off its spot. I thought I had missed it because I was too far over. Anyway, it is no longer attached to the garage floor. Now to the crow part, which leads directly to the policeman part. 

This morning I had to walk to Poco Building Supplies to get some construction adhesive, some heavy duty construction adhesive, to re-attach the parking stop. It was a lovely morning. I walked down the pedestrian walkway in front of our building, admiring the gardens, then up a block to Maryhill Road. On a small patch of grass on the side of an apartment building, a crow was wrestling with a very long and very stubborn worm. The combatants were close to the sidewalk. The crow was not going to let its breakfast go and the worm was not going to give up without a fight and I did not want to walk by with the bloody crow so damn close to me. So there was a bit of a stand-off. I stood still, kind of shooing the crow away. I was doing it gently; I didn’t want it to be startled and fly towards me, possibly pecking my eyes out on the way by as crows have been known to do. The crow did not want to be shooed away. It was going to pull that worm out and eat it.  Eventually, the crow pulled the worm out and I was able to get it to hop away from the sidewalk, the worm clutched in its nasty little beak. I edged by, keeping a eye on it, in case it tried anything. I was still doing little shooing motions with my purse; it’s big enough to ward off an attacking crow. All my purses are; I’m always prepared for the possible, and I feel inevitable, crow attack. I’m not sure any of my purses would protect me against seagulls…. But I’ll solve that problem another time; now back to the story.

As I walked, with small, shuffling steps past the scene of the crow incident, I saw a parked police car. And as I got closer, I noticed the policeman inside it was watching me. I stopped using my purse as a shield, nonchalantly swinging it up my arm to my shoulder, and lengthened my stride. I may have been a little self-conscious, but I think the young man in the car had been watching me and laughing. I didn’t look back as I continued to the hardware store.

When I told Dale about this, he said the policeman was probably relaying the whole thing over his radio, regaling his uniformed buddies with the story of the crazy lady who was afraid of a little crow. However, I choose to believe the officer was just happy that the crow didn’t attack, which would have forced him out of his car and into action. It was relief laughter, not laughter at a silly middle-aged woman who is afraid of birds that live in close proximity with humans and rarely attack.  The operative word there being “rarely”; they are just waiting for me to let my guard down. And you know what, that ain’t never gonna happen!

(This is not the crow that threatened me this morning but it looked exactly the same, right down to the beady, evil little eyes.)