Cap’n Flint

When I was eleven or twelve, my father was a technical writer at North American Aviation in Columbus, Ohio, and my mother was a registered nurse. They were both gone during the day; no one paid attention to what we did.  My friends and I spent much of our time exploring the woods by Big Walnut Creek, perhaps half a mile from where we lived.  The woods stretched along both sides of the creek from 20 or 30 to 50 or 60 yards wide, made up of trees and trails and brush that seemed to us little changed from the time before Europeans settled the Ohio territory.  We explored the trails through the woods, swam in the creek, stole corn from local farm fields and roasted the ears in coals from fires we built, and generally lived free from adult supervision.  That spring a friend and I discovered a crow’s nest a hundred feet or so high in a tree.   I don’t remember how we made it to the lower branches, but we climbed up to the nest and found baby crows.  I tucked one into my shirt, climbed down, and took it home.

In my bedroom I built a nest in a cardboard box and put the box in the window next to my bed and put the baby in the nest.  I took a finger of canned dog food we had for our Cocker Spaniels, rolled it into a pea sized ball, and forced it into the chick’s mouth.  When I came back with the second ball, it raised its head, opened its beak, and I dropped it in.  I named the chick after the character in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Cap’n Flint thrived on dog food.  When I said its name, it reached up and opened its beak, ready for a meal.  I discovered that chicks are surprisingly neat.  When it needed to poop, it stretched its butt over the edge of the nest so the dropping landed outside the nest.  As it grew, it gripped my finger and learned to sit on my shoulder.  When it rode on my shoulder it would stretch back to poop.  I learned quickly that if I stood up straight, it would miss me. 

I played with him and if we played outside, I did not need to clean up, so I often took him outside.  As Cap’n Flint grew, he grew used to our other pets. Careless was curious but Mitzie was not.  Try as I might, I could not get Mitzie to be friends.

I often took Cap’n Flint with me as I rode my bike around the neighborhood.  He clutched my shoulder, and if I went fast, he would stretch his wings as if he were flying.  As he grew, he started flying, sometimes to the top of the clothesline posts in the back yard, and then to the roof of the house.  When I called, he flew back to me.  In time, I left him outside during the day because he always came when I called.  Once, he flew at a woman walking on the sidewalk.  I thought he was trying to land on her shoulder, she thought he was attacking her.  She let me know in no uncertain terms how unhappy she was about making his acquaintance even though most of our neighbors knew us.

I put water in our wagon and he enjoyed bathing.  A few fathers of friends told me that if I split his tongue, he could learn to talk.  I don’t know why I did not think that was a good idea; I never followed that suggestion.  Cap’n Flint spent more time outdoors on his own, and then he made the acquaintance of other crows, wild crows, a flock that varied in size day to day from a few to perhaps fifty or so.  They stayed at least a hundred yards away from me sitting in trees or on housetops, often scolding me, but they welcomed Cap’n Flint.  He traveled with them as they flew from place to place but when I called him, he came back.  He started staying with them at night, but each morning came to the house and called.  I went out with a snack, dog food, lettuce, or a cookie.  I petted him and we spent a few minutes or an hour together, then he flew back to his new friends.

Early one morning, he called, but I was still in bed and did not go out.  When I finally got up and went out, he was not waiting.   I called and called.  He never returned.  I hope he lived a long and happy life with his own kind.