An Ode To Crows..

[bluerains]

Great Article!

Soccer Playing Crows!

"they're just the smartest"

Science has already proven that crows are smarter than most people.
Now from Japan comes the newest piece of evidence: crows can play
soccer.

Just in time for World Cup season, four carrion crows at the
Tokuyama Zoo got dressed up in Japanese soccer jerseys and kicked
the ball around a miniature field.

They can dribble the ball toward a goal, and sometimes tackle each
other before scoring. Zookeepers plan to teach them next how to pass
and take free kicks.

According to zookeeper Satoru Tanaka, crows aren't the first birds
they've attempted to teach to play soccer -- they're just the
smartest.

"We tried to coach owls and falcons as well, but the crows were the
best. They're such intelligent creatures," he told the Associated
Press.

The human-staffed Team Japan recently lost to Australia.

http://www.sploid.com/news/2006/06/soccerplaying_c.php

 

[bluerains]

From one of my favorite poets

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.