Something was bothering me this morning.
It wasn't the news of the awful bombings in Belgium....... we seem to be getting used to these atrocities in this very small world, no, it was a small little moment of helplessness that has prayed on my mind.
Every morning Mary and I march out on our two mile power walk. It's a round robin where we walk through the village up to the newly refurbished garage shop ( Gay Gordon told me rather breathlessly that they NOW had a bigger selection of proper foodstuffs
AND electric doors!)
We then walk up Bryn y Odyn , past a few cottages and a farm then around the base of the Gop hill at the top of High Street and then back home.
It takes half an hour when Mary is behaving.
Yesterday we had just reached the halfway point when I was stopped by a very sharp tap.....tap.... tap.
In the silence of the lane the noise came again and I looked around to see where it could be coming from. We were stood next to a small holiday cottage and when the tapping sounded again I followed Mary's gaze as she looked up to one of the bedroom windows .
There standing on the inside window sill was a huge black crow.
The crow looked down at us for a moment and struck the window pane with another three sharp taps with his beak.
It looked as though he was trying to get our attention.
The cottage was shut up , locked and heavily alarmed so I was at a bit of a loss of what to do, so I marshaled Mary and walked to the neighbouring farm only twenty feet or so across the lane.
As we disappeared from the crow's sight, the tap, tap, tap on the window became a little more frantic
And this bothered me even more.
I found the farmer who told me that the cottage owner lived in Manchester and seldom came over, but he promised he would search for the owner's phone number and would ring him for instructions on what to do.
The thought of this bird effectively trapped inside a lonely cottage bothered me and I shared the story with Mrs Trellis when I passed her further down the lane.
This morning there was no sign of the crow . I checked through each window and tapped on the panes to encourage him to reply if he was still there but the place seemed quiet and still. I did notice that several of the short net curtains framing each window, upstairs and down were in disarray.
I came home to start
operation dog snot removal ( mother in law arrives in a day or so) only being interrupted by Mrs Trellis who wanted to drop off a chocolate Easter Bunny for me and the Prof.
She asked me about the Crow.
" He was asking for your help" she noted brightly
That made me feel worse.......
