Clumsy Crow

On yesterday's mid-summer walk to work I encountered a crow. It was apparently dead in a grassy ditch beside the road. Then I saw a dark eye blink.

The big black bird was beautiful, with glossy feathers from the neck down gleaming in the sunrise and no such reflection from fluffly, greyish down of the head. It's thick, down-curving beak looked lethal, especially when opened wide to try to take my thumb as I began the physical examination.

The neck was supple, with full range of sidebending left and right as she tracked my movements. Shoulders had full range of motion as she flapped to try to evade my touch. The chest was symmetrical, with a burst of expansion at each cawing protest to the indignity of my inspection. The abdomen was soft and flat, with no signs of distension or trauma. Hips and knees had intact ranges of passive flexion and extension. Despite a noticeably low body weight, an avian adaptation to levitation or maybe just a sex difference in body mass, she seemed full of vibrant energy. The only discernible abnormality was in active range of motion of the lower extremities - she could not move her own legs or talons.

It was tempting to bring this injured bird home. In humans, paralysis below the waist could mean a lower spinal cord injury, tumor, or infection. Without trauma or other signs of cancer, infection becomes the most likely cause, and crows are particularly susceptible to one that causes just these symptoms.

The West Nile virus is being carried to the temperate world by expanding ranges of tropical mosquitoes. In humans, a bite from one can bring on a fever, body aches, and fatigue. In most cases the febrile illness resolves in a few days and the recovering person never knew what hit them other than a bad cold. In a tiny percentage of infections, less than 1%, the virus manages to circulate to the central nervous system causing the worst headache of your life (meningitis) or sudden paralysis of one or more parts of the body (encephalitis). With no effective treatment other than hydration and time, a small percentage of people with a central nervous system infection die. Most survive with minimal disability.

The percentages are reversed in crows. Once injected by an infected mosquito, the virus rapidly replicates and the beautiful big black bird rapidly declines. More than 80% of infected crows will die from paralysis, dehydration, or predation from being unable to fly.

On my run home from work I carried a dropper bottle of spring water infused with antiviral and immune boosting herbs. My corvid charge was laid up in behind the wall I had moved her to, legs still useless behind her. She flapped her wings as I held her from behind, but each successive caw of protest became a little less vigorous. All two inches of her strong black beak snapped at the approaching eyedropper, barely failing to shatter the glass. A dark eye looked up in surprise when her latching on allowed me to squirt a dropper full down her throat. For the next rounds she snapped but didn't hold, and I was able to get a half dozen squirts mostly in her mouth.

That night I slept a dreamless sleep under the full Wort Moon, our black cat hovering around my head until awakened, uncharacteristically, later than usual.

"Are you going to work today?" my partner called from the bedroom door.

"Yes, thanks," I called back while resisting the pull back into the darkness of our canopied bed.

She was still there behind the wall. I pulled out the dropper bottle, held her thin body behind unprotesting wings, and tilted back her head. One dark eye stared up, unblinking, as I buried her black body in a bed of white pine needles.