I’ve just spent a rather entertaining fifteen minutes stood in the rain watching a crow try to eat an acorn. Yes, I’m that sad 
The weather’s rubbish. My project is rubbish (Yeah, it’s probably not. But that’s how I feel right now). My cooking is rubbish. Everything’s just a bit rubbish. So I do what any sensible person would do, and go for a walk to buy beans and bread for that traditional pick-me-up, beans on toast. Co-op don’t have bread – rubbish. The Shell garage doesn’t have bread or beans – also rubbish. So I have to walk all the way to Waitrose for extortionate bread and gold plated (hopefully, for the price) beans – extra rubbish. However I did run in to a new orange flavour Relentless (“the energy drink with a health warning”) which tastes slightly less artificial than the original and now has me buzzed up.
On the way back, I came across a crow hopping around in the middle of the road. It had an acorn in it’s mouth, so having nothing to do but get out of the rain, get changed out of my greens (Was supposed to be covering a rugby thing. Didn’t happen because of rain. Didn’t find out until I got there. Rubbish.) , warm up, eat beans on toast, do project, etc, etc, I decided to stop and watch.
Obviously, once I stopped and stood still, I became less of a threat and the crow started going about his business. Which was trying to break open the acorn. His plan was simple:
- Place acorn in a puddle. Tap it with beak.
- ???
- Profit
This seemed to be particularly unsuccessful. However many times the crow picked up his acorn, walked across the road to the next puddle, dropped it in the puddle and pecked at it, the acorn didn’t appear to open. One of the major problems may have been all the people and cars and other scary things that were about – each time something moved nearby that was bigger than the bird, it would place the acorn in the dead centre of the puddle and retreat to the far side, dancing around the edge always keeping the car/oldfolk/kid-in-pushchair on the other side of the puddle, safely away on the far side of the vast expanse of water.
Then the crow hit on something. One car came a bit too close, to the crow grabbed his (I say his, might well have been a lady crow, I’ve no idea how to tell the difference) acorn and flew for the nearest high grown, a bus stop-signifying post that was recently bent out of shape by a council rubbish collecting lorry. Car safely away, and he jumped back off his post and swooped down towards the nearest puddle to continue his futile dunking and pecking routine. Then disaster! He lost his grip on the nut.
You could almost imagine what was going through the bird’s mind as he sat next to the acorn and looked quizzically at it. “Dang, dropped it. Hang on a tick! Hmm, looks a bit bent. Maybe this will do the trick?” Having tried in the puddle again for a couple of minutes, he went for another go at the throwing the thing at the ground trick.
Success! The crow swooped down upon his prize, and pecked away at those sweet, sweet innards. And I went home, strangely full of renewed vigour and hope for the future. Take a lesson from the crow. “Never give up, never surrender”
