The Crow's Nest

The Crow’s Nest

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             At the top of the attic stairs; at the very top of the home, there was a room.  This room was called “The Crow’s Nest”.  There was a homemade hand painted sign on the closed door that said “The Crow’s Nest”.  Several painted crows surrounded this title.  This painted sign had been made on an old stiff paper shirt board.  It was now warped and chipped from dangling from it’s single tack.  Eventually I removed the sign and sold it.  That was after a thirty year association with the sign and the room.

            The name; “The Crow’s Nest’s” came from the woman whose room this was.  She derived the “crow’s nest” from her mother who had once had a pet crow.  The pet crow’s name was Simon.  That name came from “Simple Simon”, the poem.  The Mother had named the crow when she was thirteen.  She had captured the baby crow, raised it and… exhibited it at a local northern Maine fair.  She exhibited Simon annually for over a half decade.

            Simon, although a docile and loyal pet, ranged free from the Mother’s family farm in northern Maine.  Coming and going as he chose, he excelled in one single passion; the gathering of small shiny objects.  No quality valuation contributed to Simon’s collecting passion.  Only shiny and size.  He had to be able to carry his discovery off and be able to hide it in his plunder trove.

            The plunder trove was the rotten hollow that formed a deep dish at the top of a large and tall corner fence post at the upper end of the back pasture near the gate.  From her childhood bedroom in the farm house the mother could see Simon tending and guarding his plunder trove.

            The varied objects Simon found and hid in the fence post top were a continuing saga and intrigue.  Most were rudimentary and unsatisfying such as a shiny new tack, a copper wire piece or a bottle cap.  Other objects were very intriguing and down right …evil.  Simon purloined a sterling silver thimble with someone’s initials on it.  One day a silver plated woman’s wristwatch appeared.  A silver bead necklace suggested that Simon hopped in the open widow of a home and hunted on a woman’s dressing table.  A silver watch chain and a tiny silver cigar clipper, it too with engraved initials, suggested Simon had no gender sensitivity in his collecting.  These finer items never ceased to entertain the mother when she inspected Simon’s fence post but also… they bothered.  It was obvious to the mother that Simon had stolen these items and that could only lead to trouble if he were found out  That consideration lead to a very ridged policy of the Mother never ever disturbing Simon’s fence post and that… was just fine by Simon.

            Simon met his end by purloining a small silver match case covering a box of matches.  He open the match box with his beak, pecked the matches and they blew up in his face, instantly blinding him, causing him to fall of the fence post and be found dead at it’s base by the mother.  She buried Simon at the base of his fence post, did not disturb his plunder and waited.  For the rest of her girlhood she would periodically check Simon’s plunder.  It was always the same.  Even after she’d grown, moved away, married, had growing children of her own and only rarely returned to home, she always would slip away and check Simon’s plunder.  On one visit home, the fence post top was empty.  Simon’s plunder was gone.