Article found at Gawker.Raven Asks Human for Help with Painful Quills After Porcupine Attack
Gertie Cleary compared the experience to a child with a splinter. "[W]hen you pull a splinter out, they holler and screech and pull their hand away," she told CTV News.The young raven fledgling who visited Cleary's Nova Scotia home last month had just borne the brunt of a porcupine attack, and was clearly reaching out to Cleary for help in extracting the painful quills that were attached to its face.Her daughter caught the amazing incident on camera and uploaded it to YouTube.According to the description, the bird, which the family named Wilfred, stuck around for a day after the "operation" before flying away.Hope for Wildlife director Hope Swinimer commended Cleary on her actions, saying Wilfred would not have survived without her help.Quoth the Raven: "Thanks lady!"[H/T: Arbroath]
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Raven rescue
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Like our animal friends, as women we have talents for connection with creatures and the natural world to get done what's required, sometimes in joy and otherwise when, like this raven, there's an impediment to be removed. Thank you for yet another amazing nature posting! Your blog is always a treat to visit.
ReplyDeleteP.S. It is generally very difficult to sex birds as either female or males as the humans (usually women) who raise backyard chickens hoping not to get roosters can attest. It fascinated me that the mom and daughter --- with a male standing by, not doing any of the dangerous work of plucking quills from a raven who reacted naturally to pain by opening a large, sharp beak that could have hurt the mom --- called this raven, "boy," as in "that's a good boy" or "buddy." As women, even though we do most of the caring and truly important sheroic work on this planet (without trying to pollute and destroy it the way men do), we have been programmed by patriarchy and its "languaging" to assume animals are 'good boys.' We have been programmed not to attribute even animal bravery to animal females but to males instead. (Because it took some animal bravery to trust the women to remove the quills, the raven became in these women's culturally programmed minds a he-crow, not the she-crow she probably was. Also because the "he" is overvalued in general in patriarchy, they as women may have felt more virtuous by removing a male crow's quills. Not such a minor point if you consider that patriarchy programs women to give energy not to ourselves and to other females but only to males. Apparently even in the animal "kingdom," and there is language again, trapping women against our own best interests to value king over queen, him over her, artificiality of man-made programming over what exists in nature.)
ReplyDeleteAnd most of us do not know (and certainly are not ever taught in the man-stream but have to by womanly luck discover it on our own) about CrowWoman in indigenous lore, or the first-nations women who took the rattle and the crow-feathers costumes to circle dance in homage to CrowWoman.
Yet a video like this one is what Mary Daly called a "vent" to let the archaic memory of female powers come back in to our psyches. I hope this post gets a lot of internet hits! We need all the vents we can get. Yay CrowWoman! She lives!
I really like this comment, Sally...I've had problems for years with the default male pronoun and now use the female pronoun as often as I can. That and the word "fellowship" which I change to sisterhood!
DeleteAlways nice to see you here!
Thanks, Delphyne; always enlightening and/or a pleasure to visit your blog!
ReplyDelete1. I read your blog all the time and I'm not sure why I don't comment everytime but you're pictures are always so amazing of the animals. I guess writing "that is so beautiful!" everytime would get old.
ReplyDelete2. I didn't watch this video because I was afraid it would upset me but I was thrilled to read about the happy ending.
3. There is an award for you at my blog. I'm not sure if you participate in these things, I don't in most, but this one I did and actually had fun sharing 7 things people don't know about me. I love hearing stuff about others too so I hope you participate.
4. #3 was not a threat and I'm not gonna get all mafioso on ya ; )