The question was soon answered. One moment my key ring was glinting in the sunlight, the next moment it disappeared somewhere in the middle of the chaparral-covered hillside, and Melanie was flying, empty-beaked, back to the top of the pine tree. A long groan went up from the onlookers and almost immediately they began to disperse as if the show had ended.
There was no use in attempting a search. The hillside was full of ticks and poison oak, and the chances of finding one small key ring in all that brush were minimal. A Junior Aide with the name Connie stitched on the pocket of her working smock claimed that Melanie had extremely sharp eyes and would certainly be able to find the keys if she wanted to. What would make Melanie want to was anybody’s guess.
Meanwhile Melanie remained on her perch on top of the pine tree. Perhaps she was merely resting. More likely, she was wondering what had happened to her audience and how she could get it back again. There is no such thing as an ex-exhibitionist.
Connie, it turned out, was something of an authority on Melanie since she lived with her family in the immediate neighborhood of the museum.
“She used to come to all our barbecues,” Connie said.
And why, I wanted to know, had Melanie stopped?
“She didn’t, we did. We haven’t had a barbecue since last Easter.”
I didn’t ask what had happened last Easter. I felt that under the circumstances I was better off not knowing.
At Connie’s suggestion we decided to try a new tactic based on the fact that Melanie couldn’t stand being ignored. Marie, Connie and I sat down again at the redwood table and pretended to be completely engrossed in the contents of Connie’s social studies textbook. For reasons which will remain forever unknown, the mynah bird chose this moment to start showing off his rather limited vocabulary.
“You’re a stool pigeon, Mother! You’re a stool pigeon, Mother!”
Whether Melanie was galvanized into action by the mynah’s voice or by our ignoring her, we will never be sure. But galvanized she was. She swooped down low over the hillside, and without an instant’s hesitation, located the key ring in the underbush and picked it up.
The speed of her performance raises questions: did she remember where she’d dropped the key ring? Or could she actually see it in the middle of all that brush? I’m inclined to believe she used her memory rather than her eyes, partly because I know how dense the underbrush is in that area and partly because of similar experiences I’ve had with dogs, our German shepherd, Brandy, in particular. Frequently while playing on the beach he loses a ball or a stick, yet he has no trouble finding them when told to. He doesn’t track the object down by smelling — this breed is not very keen-nosed anyway — and his eyesight isn’t half as good as my own. I must conclude that he remembers, not in the human way — where-did-I-drop-that-blinking-ball? — but in his own and Melanie’s way, which we still do not fully understand.
Keepers of parrots, cockatoos, budgerigars and the like usually have tales to tell about the prodigious memory feats of their pets. Usually, too, ornithologists put a grain of salt on these tales. Experiments conducted on wild birds indicate that some species have a remarkable capacity to remember. Joel Carl Welty cites one such experiment in his definitive work, The Life of Birds:
The Nutcracker, Nucifraga caryocatactes, in Sweden lives on hazelnuts and spends its full time for three months in the autumn gathering and storing the nuts. In a series of observations by Swanberg [1951] the birds were observed to fill their throat pouches at the hazel thickets and fly as far as six kilometers [about four miles] to bury them in their spruce-forest territories, in small heaps covered with moss or lichens. The Nutcrackers live on the nuts over winter and feed their young on them the next spring. Apparently the birds remember where they have stored the nuts, for of 357 excavations, some of them through snow 45 centimeters [about 1 ½ feet] deep, 86 % were successful.
Probably we will never know exactly how Melanie located my key ring with such speed and will have to be content with the fact that she did find it. She landed on the redwood table, wearing the key ring proudly in her beak. Both Marie and I made attempts to grab it away from her, but Melanie let out a reproachful croak and daintily stepped beyond our reach.
“You’ll never get it from her that way,” Connie said. “My dad tried that at Easter and Melanie still has his gold-plated monogrammed bottle opener. If you want her to give up something, you should offer her a substitute. Do you have any jewelry you wouldn’t mind losing?”
Marie wore no jewelry, and all I had on was my wedding ring. I made it clear that I would prefer to walk the six miles home rather than add my wedding ring to Melanie’s collection of trinkets.
We finally decided, after a brief caucus, that we would have to appeal to another aspect of Melanie’s greed. She was always hungry, Connie said, and frankfurters were her particular weakness, especially if they were doused with ketchup or barbecue sauce, perhaps to give them a more authentic carrion appearance. Connie went to the kitchen and returned with two ketchup-covered frankfurters on a paper plate. She put the plate on the ground about ten feet away from Melanie, who had turned her head and was ignoring the whole business.
“She’s not hungry,” I said.
Connie disagreed. “She’s just pretending. Keep watching and be ready to grab the keys when she drops them.”
For the next few minutes Melanie gave an Academy Award performance as she-who-couldn’t-care-less. She took a few dainty steps and gazed pensively up at the sky; she studied the oak trees and the sycamores; she lifted her right foot and examined her name band like a bored young woman consulting her wristwatch; she cocked her head to listen to the mynah bird who was still telling Mother she was a stool pigeon.
Then, suddenly, Melanie plunged to the ground. I think she meant to pick up both frankfurters while still retaining the key ring, but even Melanie’s formidable beak wasn’t capable of managing such a load.
There are probably few times in life when a person is grateful for a ketchup-covered key ring. That was one of them.
Even now, Melanie’s admirers point out that it was a hot summer that year, and if excuses are made for human misconduct during a heat wave, they should certainly be made for corvine delinquency. The fact is that ravens are as impervious to climate as they are to environment. They are at home in the treeless arctic tundra and in thick forests of spruce or alder, in town and country, in the mountains, on the coast and in the desert. While driving through the Mojave Desert in a severe windstorm with the temperature well above 100° F., when it seemed no living creature could exist, I have seen ravens looking as sleek as if they’d just stepped out of a cold shower.
No, it was not the heat that was responsible for Melanie’s repeated indiscretions that summer; it was the restlessness in her bones, the quickening of her blood. Melanie was growing up. While her misdeeds were not planned to call attention to the fact that the time had come when she needed the company of another raven to carry out her purpose in life, this was the effect of them. It was decided that Melanie should be returned to Santa Cruz, the island where she was born.
Her journey across the twenty-five miles of channel was taken in style on a boat borrowed for the occasion by her adopted family. Melanie rode in the galley, sitting part of the time on the refrigerator, the rest on the top bunk. She was very quiet and refused to eat. Perhaps she was seasick or tired. I can’t, however, discount the possibility that she was quietly remembering her first sea voyage and all the things that had since happened to her — and to a lot of others! — and her fine collection of admirers and earrings and silver bells that had to be left behind. Any ornithologist will tell you ravens don’t think, but any friend of Melanie’s will insist they do.