Captive Raven
“If I died right here right now you would eat my eyeballs, wouldn’t you, you beautiful creep?” I asked the Raven. He stared back with bright, innocent eyes before bobbing his beautiful head up and down, even though we had been hanging out for two days and were heading toward a best friendship. But who am I to judge the culture of Ravens when, someday—for art and science—I’ll merrily add one or two or more of his dead brethren to my growing taxidermy collection.
Did you know that baby ravens can follow the gaze of their pals AND they can follow a human gaze? This means that they know our eyeballs are like their eyeballs and they will happily eat our eyeballs anyhow.
Anyway, these birds are so damn delightful that I can ignore my eyeball-plucking phobia (a really really big deal) and rank them among my favorite birds.
This Raven made me as happy as he made me sad as I sat with him for a few hours during my two-day Living Desert Zoo visit. If all the world had a beauty pageant, I could make an argument for this Raven—he’d have my vote, at least. Hobbled by a once-broken wing, he shifted and shrugged,clearly uncomfortable in his own body. I wonder if he knows that I know how he feels.
I have mixed thoughts about animals in captivity that I’m sorting through and just might turn into a whole new art project. I actually have a lot of thoughts about captivity, but no time to write them all here, so stay tuned, I guess.
