The next thing we did was to try and scare it by spraying water from one end of the car, with the hope that it would then totter over from the other side. But the poor thing got scared and somehow, managed to rest on the axle of the rear wheel on the right side.
I then tried kicking the tyre and shaking my car, hoping that the crow would budge, but it didn't I then took a rather long broom, reached in from the back of the car and tried to poke it out. And all that I managed to do was to bring out the best manoeuvre of the crow, which somehow squeezed itself on to the tyre of my car. As seen in the picture below:
I now hoped that since it was technically on the outside of the car, it would jump out. I continued to shake the car, albeit this time it was from the back. Again, no movement. I brought out a torch and checked whether the crow was caught somewhere in the gaps and had probably died. But even the dim ray of light from the torch showed that the crow was alive.
I gathered courage and tried poking the crow using the broom. Somehow, the crow didn't mind all this poking and I started to suspect that it probably liked the poking. Maybe it was getting a crow's equivalent of an acupuncture treatment.
I then called up my friend who is generally quite knowledgeable in all matters under the sun (also in the sun, over the sun and to the sides of the sun). But for some vague reason, he seemed to be more interested in talking to his brother in the US than even trying to find out why I was calling him in the first place. And in a twist of fate, his brother didn't continue the call and so, he called me back to find out the problem. And his solution was to start the car or honk it or both or for good measure, try moving the car slowly. I was quite petrified in doing any or all of it, but as any trusted disciple would do, followed my master.
I started my car and released the parking brake, with the hope that the little movement in the wheels would get the crow going. But no. So, finally my parents and one of their senior citizen friends who was talking to them at our gate, strongly advised me to simply walk away from the car. The reasoning behind that idea was that the crow was bound to get bored and walk away.
I accepted this option and lo behold, the baby crow started cawing in a couple of minutes. This attracted a couple of bigger crows in the vicinity and finally, one of them bigger ones came down to ground. It inspected the source of the caw and from the manner in which it was running around the car, cawing back and forth with the younger one, I am strongly inclined to think that this bigger one was the Mother Crow and right or wrong, I am going to refer to this crow with that title for the remainder of this post. The usage of words like Mother Crow and Baby Crow may make you think that I am reading too many children's book, but rest assured that it is not the case. You can see the Mother Crow's work here:
The cawing continued and the Mother Crow started jumping towards the Baby Crow's perch, to try and pull the Baby Crow out. It didn't really succeed and moreover, the Mother Crow also started getting quite concerned that I was standing in the vicinity.
Initially I was only trying to take a video of the whole rescue operation. But I felt that with the darkness increasing, the crows may probably not be able to execute their rescue plan correctly.
So I took the torch and started shining it towards the wheelbase, though I was at least some 5-6 feet diagonally away from the front-right side of the car (as should be evident from the pictures). But the Mother Crow somehow didn't like me acting like the Nightingale With The Lamp and started approaching me with louder caws.
Communication, as you may have heard in multiple forums, is not just about what you convey in your language, it is quite often about what you convey without saying anything, using your body language. Similarly, in this case, while I didn't understand what the Mother Crow was cawing to me, I sure did understand from its rather aggressive approach towards where I was standing, that it didn't want me to shine the torch at it or its Baby.
After a couple of more attempts, the Baby Crow finally decided to budge out of its hiding or resting place and actually jumped out of the wheelbase to the cemented ground below. The Mother Crow came close and somehow egged on this Baby Crow to fly up, though the flight was just a high jump of 3 feet, into the branches of a tree nearby. You can see this video here (Apologies for the poor quality video):
All in all, it was a rather interesting evening for me. I found the drama that unfolded in front of me, quite charming actually!
You can see both videos here:
Video 1
Video 2
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