I found Petey still alive, his small body mangled and tethered to a two by four tangled by a ragged length of barbed wire. An eight inch nail protruded from his chest, pounded deep and skewering him to his wood crucifix which struck unnaturally straight in the cat tailed and milk weeded mud of the “marsh” , a small quarter acre section of the woods surrounding the back pasture of Mr. Tennison’s farm.

    I was nine years old the day I found Petey dying in those woods. Decades later, I remember now the great trees there, the walnuts, hickory’s, elms, osage orange, silver maples, box elders and sycamores. They held for each neighborhood child, a fascination, back when kids could still be fascinated by the natural world. For me, the woods and Steven’s Creek that ran through them became my own personal Neverland

    Time has not shadowed the clarity of the day I found Petey dying. In my memory, his coal black crow eyes are still riveted to mine, the wild dark flaming life of them flickering out of his coal black face like a small obsidian ember as I fall in the muck to my knees desperately trying to free him, my hands punctured by the barbed wire as my tears mix this his blood, long ceasing to pour form his fatal wound. I felt his heart barely thumping through my fingers. I could see that his beautiful black wings had been crudely clipped with some sharp instrument. I tried to imagine how he must have struggled, suddenly aware that of his fate at the hands of his captor. How quickly his life long trust of man must have vanished, knowing with that first violent grasping of his body that whoever did this was going to kill him. He would have known then that this was not another fun game between his kingdom and man’s.

    I cried unashamedly when he died. I was still young and had not yet found sports, which would later bring and forge in me a tougher side. A side no less compassionate for animals , but more intolerant of man. I wept from my inability to comprehend the inhumanity of the episode as a boy. I anger now at it’s remembrance , fully able to comprehend it as a grown man.

    I remember most of all that Petey, upon seeing me approach in the marsh , acknowledged me with a pointed vocal burble, a weakened call that struck my heart like the nail that tortured his body. Petey’s voice cut through my sobbing bewildered whispering of his name as he assured me that he he held me blameless for his plight. Petey wanted me to know that he knew I had nothing to do with his death, with the dying of his flight, in the ceasing of his rolling, soaring, mischievous dances. He released me from my own species that day with an understanding shared in some ancient way between bird and boy, that had bound our spirits together for the last 8 months.

    Petey’s death was my first step of true communication with the animal world and from that incident I was spring boarded to a life of respect for every cawer, howler, meower, barker, and warbler. A respect for everything living except my own kind, a species devoid of respect for anything living, be it bird, water, tree and even my own kind.

     But what has fueled this story to be completed . Why now? It was a short article in the paper from the town where I was raised and delivered to the town where I now live thousands of miles away. I have attempted to complete this story over the last several years unable to create a fitting ending to the tragedy of that day, until now that is. Forty years later, the epilogue has been written for me in the form of this small town news article which has reminded me that somehow, nature, Karma, God or whatever you want to call it, has extracted it’s timeless fitting revenge!

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    When I was nine the world was more genuine. Kids still played games like “kick the can” on those warm summer nights with a million cricket legs rubbing in the fields and freshly mowed yards. The crackle of voices from new televisions, none in color yet, mingling through the open screened doors , with the yells of “all ee all ee outs in free” . This was new suburbia, in the middle of summer , in the middle of America.

    Father’s worked their jobs and rode home on busses from the Transfer House in downtown Decatur. Mother’s hung freshly washed clothes on clotheslines. No one had heard of clothes dryers, at least not in our neighborhood , and if they had, the cost of one was beyond comprehension. My sister and I were lucky, for if we were not well off, we did not know it. Like many families then our parents armored their kids from the adult world of bills, stress and want. We lived on the outskirts of town, on a half acre lot across the street from the new cluster of homes being built called Home Park, one of the first in the city where eventually hundreds of homes would huddle, all of them grander than ours. I remember aurally the hammers and saws of early morning, the progress of man waking me to another day of play OUTSIDE!

    Our property was bordered not by parking lots , gas stations or strip malls but by pastures and fruit trees. Our back yard hugged the two 50 acre fields of Mr. Tennisons farm, a man crippled from some childhood accident that we never understood as kids. But his handicap, evidenced by his horrible limp , always spoke to his kindness as a man, displayed by his quiet acquiescence to our repeated forays through his property to get to the woods. We would roam through the tall summer grass of Mr. Tennison’s fields to the row of hedge apple trees, with large yellow milk sapped fruit dangling from their spiny branches , their smallest fruit, perfect for developing a young boys pitching arm. Beyond that boundary of hedge apple trees , 70 yards through another field, was Mr. Tennison’s actual home , along with his high roofed barn that we never ventured near out of respect for Mr Tennison so close it stood to the home he shared with his wife.

    Bounding the back pasture of his farm were the WOODS and sparkling through those woods ran Steven Creek, shallow enough in spots to wade across and deep enough in others, to drown. Then more woods ran along the right and in that area was the infamous 1/4 mile long black sewer pipe running through the thickest trees, the beautiful danger of it, walking it, 40 feet above the ground in spots, inducing even the most fool hardy kids to crawl instead of walk. Mike, my friend lived in a farmhouse with his grandmother at the end of a gravel lane that turned INTO those woods. And although Mike’s granny, known to us as “ole Mrs. P” had little to say to me when I would visit , she had plenty to say with her actions. She would invite me to dinner then go outside grab a chicken, throw it’s neck over a stump and chop off it’s head, the term “ a chicken running around without it’s head” being staged in stark gruesome reality to a 9 year old , the scent of chicken blood mixing with the sweet aroma of pear trees that circled her entire home. Out back by her old well stood a 3 story scary sloped tin roofed barn with trap doors and a hayloft that served as our fort in the summer and our reprieve from the wind chill cold in the winter. Mike and I would play there for hours, often after our foray into the dump that also bordered his grandmother's property. We would spend entire mornings in the dump, picking up old bottles that glistened like diamonds in the sun and tossing them at the giant rats that lived and populated the deepest recesses of a century of trash. Down by the marsh area where I had found Petey was the winding long but dead ended Stanley Avenue. A road always seemingly dark even in sunny days and leading to to four small old ramshackle homes, homes even smaller than ours. At the very end of Stanley Avenue lived old Mrs. Reedle, alone , shuttering her life and her memories , except on sunny spring days when we would see her tending to her perfect lilac bushes that covered her home in an aromatic blanket that assuaged her poverty.

    And there was one other home there, the shabbiest tin roofed spit of a home that seemed to refuse the sun in its daily passing. It was there that Lonnie Martin lived, the darkest metal headed , vilest bully of a boy who's life today would be examined and digested in an effort to explain his nasty demeanor. A boy who today would be labeled a victim of circumstance , his violent spirit enabled by a mix of psycho babble nonsense and newly named syndromes born from the devoid of basic discernment that pervades today's political correctness. Perhaps some of today's cerebral fodder would be rightly uttered in Lonnie's case, a boy seemingly stained from birth by a six inch dark birth mark on his neck. We were not so sophisticated then as kids. It was easier then to strip the paint from the metal. We knew what we knew about Lonnie Martin. He was mad, bad and mean.

    It was at our house on Center Street in Decatur that I first met Petey at daybreak on one of those crisp , clean, brilliant Spring mornings that still existed then. I remember being awoken that morning by the cawing of the big crows at the back edge of our small property. One crow would sit and keep a vigilant watch from the solitary Hawthorn tree which in all the years we lived on Center St. never grew taller than 15 feet. The other Crows, often numbering in the 20's would feed, pecking and somehow finding something edible among the small grassless patch of dirt where my father would always empty his coffee grounds. On one summer morning , with no school to interrupt my daily play, I was awakened and transfixed by one Crow perched on the clothes line post 10 feet outside my bedroom window and cawing repeatedly. I flung my face against the window screen and asked him" Are you talking to me"? to which he bobbed his head and cawed even louder, startling me with his obvious response. I pulled on a tee shirt, my blue jeans and my white Converse Chuck Taylor all stars. Out back I flew, my eyes squinting in the early morning sun as the back garage door closed with a bang of a boy's excitement.

    As my eyes adapted, I saw one big Crow, the Crow I would come to know as Petey hopping mercurially down from the clothes line post and landing on our silver 5 feet high septic tank. My mind was reeling thinking this Crow wanted to be my friend. This was obviously the case as each small step I took towards him, he would take a small hop back. I found myself whispering " Hey what's your name, do you have a name?" assuming that anything living and trying to communicate with me would have a name. This give and take of space between us lasted for ten minutes, our dance broken suddenly by the FLAP FLAP FLAP of 15 other Crows rising at once to wing. Petey's departure surprised me as the " Murder" of Crows as they were unjustly labeled lifted and flew all at once. They had been warned by the solitary sentinel Crow in the Hawthorn tree to something or some one's presence. Within seconds I saw what had caused his alarm, a red tailed hawk soaring towards us from the tree line of Mr. Tennison's field. And while it was not uncommon to see Crows ganging up and pestering in flight their natural flying enemies, that morning the Crows must have had their fill for they spread out in many directions. My eyes never left Petey and I followed him as he flapped and curled and soared beyond the gravel lane that led into the woods. I realized then that Petey had me hooked already. I waited all morning for the Crow's to return, but to no avail. My mother, up then, came out and asked me what I was doing just sitting in our metal lawn chair so early in the morning. I never gave her an answer , as I made my way to come back inside but it would be my mother that I realized in a few minutes, knew Petey by name.

    Ten minutes later, as mom stirred the Quaker Oats oatmeal that she fixed virtually every morning for my sister and I , I wondered if I should tell her about my encounter with Petey. I finally blurted out " I think a Crow was trying to get me to come out and play this morning"!. My mom replied, "What makes you say that " ? I told her how one Crow had awakened me by cawing right outside my bedroom window and how I felt the urge to run out and try to talk to him. I told her about how we danced our introduction. My sister, a whole 11 months older and a cat, dog, bird, frog, snake and every living creature lover, assured me that the bird was probably very intelligent and in trying to make friends with me, a "lesser member of my species", he has simply been performing and animal egalitarian act that had to do with a betterment of his species through an act of pity.

    "That crow" , said my mother was probably " Petey". She explained that Petey was a neighborhood crow that had befriended others in the past. Mom recounted how a year ago , over a morning coffee talk with Mrs. Wilkerson, the widow who lived next door, the subject of Petey had come up when my mother had noticed how close Petey had gotten to Mrs. Wilkerson on more than one occasion. Mr's Wilkerson informed her that Petey had been around for at least 4 years prior to our moving to out Center St. address. Mrs. Wilkerson thought that Petey had belonged to a local boy , Bob Brookson, who somehow had befriended him long ago. Mrs WIlkerson told mom that Bob Brookson had drowned three years ago in Steven's Creek on a tragic winter day when he had skated down the frozen creek but fallen through where the new Home Park Pool now stood. He had been alone and after falling through he had been unable to find the surface again and that the weight of his clothes and the cold of the water must have hastened his panic. The police had been called after Bob had not returned home after several hours and the area where the opening in the ice was opened more and the creek was dragged . They found his body in only 7 feet of water but well over the 11 year old boys head.

    Petey for all his contact with humans had kept most of his wildness and while I felt initially gifted by his choosing me to befriend, I also was let down by the fact that he might not have chosen me at all but it had simply been a case of me being in the right place at the right time earlier in the morning. My mother seeing a young boy's disappointment in the actual uniqueness of my experience assure me " John , he woke YOU up to come out and meet him, not your sister, nor any of your friends. He sees the gentleness of you and I'm sure he wanted you as a friend". Those were the words I needed to hear and I could barely sleep that night in the anticipation of seeing my new friend the next day .

    I was ready for Petey the next morning. My Dad, dressed and almost out the door for work, sat me down and spoke a few words about my incident with Petey which I had repeated to him in detail the night before. My Dad, a welder and a bus driver working two jobs, a man who had lost his own father when he was eight, and a man who had lied about his age to get work with the Wabash railroad when he was 14 took the time to assure me " Animals are better judges of people than people are. He's friendly , but remember he's also wild so respect that in him." I had no idea at that age what that meant but I knew it was important. The sad thing about that morning is that after waiting 2 hours in the back swing for Petey to show up, neither Petey nor his flock of friends appeared. I saw Crows flying 300 yards away back above the tall Sycamore trees that bordered the woods so I concluded that a better feeding spot had been found. I felt then that my friendship with Petey had just been a folly.

    The following day, another clear warm Midwestern Spring day , I again was awoken by the cawing of a crow sitting on the sill of my window. I opened one of my eyes and there was a bird there, black. large and impressive and cawing! A second later, I was running through the house, out to the garage , pulling on my Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars and there was Petey. How did I know it was Petey? I know for he looked IN me not just at me. I moved to the swing to sit and he cawed his hello from 10 feet away, his boldness frightening me as I was not used to this that type of greeting from humans let alone animals. I realized I was empty handed of anything to offer Petey to eat and that it was not important WHY Petey wanted to be friends but only that he did. If it was food he wanted, I would feed him all day. His attention to me for food was a trade off I would gladly make . I spoke slowly to him then. "Petey , stay here. Don't fly away ok? I'm going to get some oatmeal" and as I slowly stepped off the swing and backed towards the garage door, I knew he would be gone when I returned. I was WRONG!!! With my hand still in the round oatmeal container I saw he had not moved at all. He sat on the ground staring at me , his beak clicking out some stranger bird language no more than 6 feet away from me. His size to me then was like that of a Condor. I slowly held out my hand full of oatmeal , my heart pounding loud enough to I was sure scare him away. I beckoned him "oatmeal , see ... oatmeal Come and get it. I won't hurt you!" and before I could finish that sentence , he lifted effortlessly from the ground and flew AT me. Once swooping curl of his black wings and at that I closed my eyes out of fear. Where did he go? but to the top of my small black haired head! His weight there was lighter than anything I had expected, all feathers of course. I could not believe the joy I felt then, the genuine connection of bird and boy. Before I could say a word he hopped down off my head to my left arm , the arm and hand that held the oatmeal. It was then that I first felt, heard smelled and consumed my first taste of HIS world. Petey at that moment , became my best friend for the rest of my life and for the rest of his , as short as it would end up being.

    From that day on , through the rest of Spring and the heat of a central Illinois summer, Petey and I were morning companions . I fed his hunger and he fed mine. Sometimes he would not appear but never three days would go by without Petey making his appearance. Petey and I had reached a point after many weeks to where he would fly up to the Hawthorne tree that bordered out back yard as crows are democratic and it would be Petey's turn to keep a vigilant watch for anything out of the ordinary that could bring danger to their routine. After a short period of time, he would then fly from the tree directly to my shoulder. I varied his breakfast between oatmeal and cornmeal that my Dad would buy from WIlson's Feed.. still a money making store as the city was surrounded by farms then . Petey loved raisins however which he devoured in an indulgent display of complete trust . often walking down my arm to my hand and perching there to get a better and more precise angle of peckdom .

    There was another quirk to Petey that was as clear as the water flowing in Stevens Creek, which back then you could have drank from without fear of any water borne illness. If someone would approach while Petey was on my shoulder or arm, he would stop eating to peruse them, whether they were 50 yards of 50 feet away. He would fly away at a moments notice if doubt arrived with them. It was therefore not surprising when on a late August day ( for I remember the warmth then) , Petey saw Lonnie Martin, the end of the road bully of a boy, cutting through Mr. Tennyson's field on his way to his home. Petey began to do his typical leg lifting dance, always right before he would stop onto my shoulder and take to wing. He flew at the first time of Lonnie Martin and flew directly to the Hawthorne tree where he proceeded to caw annoyingly in a voice I had not heard before. A strident, angry, endless cawing with wings flapping and head bobbing eyes glaring!

    Not for one moment did he take his dark eyes off of Lonnie Martin, who even at 70 yards away was too close for Petey's comfort. Lonnie noticed Petey too for he turned to look at me as he yelled across the field " Hey you little son of a bitch, tell your crappy bird to shut up or I'll come over there and kick both of your asses!" It was then that I realized Petey's comprehension of the English language was more developed than mine own , for while I had never heard anyone use some of the phrases Lonnie did, Petey must have heard them before for he flew fast and hard, his wings flapping and soaring directly at Lonnie Martin! Flying low he went and Lonnie, like all true bully's when confronted, took off running , until I lost sight of him in the tall grass, his red haired head bobbing up and down like Petey's had as Petey dive bombed Lonnie's every move. I had never seen a Crow attack a human before. I stood there puffed up and proud of my Petey, for if anyone deserved his Crow wrath , it was Lonnie Martin, the constant agitator of every living thing in the neighborhood.

    This is where Petey's story turns tragic. It happened on a Saturday in October when I expected Petey to appear for he had missed two days already and and never had he not appeared for 3 days in a row. I saw his Crow friends flapping around at a distance but no Petey. It was on this Fall day , cloudy but crisp with the sugar Maple in front burning with it's colors that the big black wall phone, with it's big rotary dial finger poking numbers , still in existence then, rang. I remember picking up the phone before mom and I needed no verification who was calling and who's voice was being weakly disguised as it uttered in it's empty dark way , " GO down to the marsh, you know where, there's a present for you there boy". Then silence. I sat there shocked for I then felt what sinister sounded like. I remember then slipping on my black boots with the little metal buckles that all kids had back then, knowing the area where I was going would be muddy. I yelled at my mom that I was going exploring in the woods which was not unusual for me to do. Two hundred years later and with more apprehension than fear, I slowly entered the high reeded area where my " present" awaited me. It was then that my young world flew apart at the first site of my dying Petey. I knew of course it had been Lonnie Martin that had called.

    Somehow, Lonnie Martin had caught Petey, perhaps putting some food in a trap that I knew his father kept on his property. Petey was dying. That I knew , and felt. After I removed him from his death bed, I could no longer take it and and seeing his eyes in their gentleness , even in his dying, I laid him down softly in a small tussock of grass then ran home crying , unable to be a man but not wanting to be. Later my mother followed me back there and went into the woods herself, the only time I ever remember here going into the woods. She came out , her face saddened and told me Petey was gone. She promised me that we would find out who had done this act but first we needed to bury Petey. She had brought with her a grocery bag and gloves. As she placed Petey in the bag it started to rain as we walked silently home together. At home she asked me to get dad's shovel and together we dug a hole under the Hawthorn tree and I placed Petey here with a handful of his favorite corn meal. he was grounded now for eternity.

    It was two day's later , after my insistence that it had been Lonnie Martin who had committed this inhumane act , that mom finally called the police. Back then the police answered and physically responded to every call. They took a statement from myself and my mother and promised us they would talk to Lonnie with the caveat that without any proof they could do nothing unless he confessed which of course he would never do and never did. The next week , my father, angrier than I had ever seen him ( other than when my sister had been threatened) called the Martin's and talked to Lonnie's obviously drunken father telling him that if he or Lonnie ever stepped foot on our property, they would be footless from there on out. That degree of anger was very rare for my father. But I knew he had lost a friend too. So that is where the story stopped for 45 years until last Monday when I read the the local paper which I have had delivered once a week for all those years to my city where I was living then, far far away. This local news story caught my eye.

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                                                                                MAN DIES IN HUNTING ACCIDENT

    "A man was found dead yesterday in what police are calling a tragic hunting accident. The unidentified body of a man approximately 50-60 years old was found by a young hiker in the woods along Stevens Creek in unincorporated Macon County. According to police reports, he had been deceased for at least 24 hours after what investigators had surmised the man had accidentally shot himself with his 12 gauge shot gun.

    Police investigators further speculated that while hunting in a grassy marshy area of the woods , the man had tripped on an old strand of barbed wire entangled on a two by four piece of wood and hidden in a thick tussock of grass. In his struggle to free himself , it appears his shot gun then discharged causing a fatal head wound. "

    The newspaper account continued. " the victim had no identification when found . He is approximately 5 foot 10 inches tall , about 180 pounds with reddish hair and a large dark birth mark on his neck. Any persons having information regarding the victim's identity should contact the local police department. The article closed with the following:

    "The hiker who found the body told police he was first attracted to the area due to a large number of Crows, which he estimated between 30 and 40 , who had gathered there and were pecking on what he thought was a dead animal lying in the low water of the marsh. It was after he approached further that he saw a plaid flannel shirt . The young hiker then used his cell phone to call 911 after scaring off the crows which he said had virtually severed the dead man's arms."