3 Dead Crows

I was walking down the street the other day when I saw a dead crow on the sidewalk. It wasn't decomposed or anything, just laying there like someone had stuffed it and preserved it and placed it on the sidewalk. It was as if it had turned to stone while sitting on a telephone wire and simply fallen to the ground, frozen forever.

"Hmm," I thought to myself. "I'll bet you anything running across a dead crow means something spiritual. If I was a more spiritual person, this would probably mean something to me. Maybe I should look it up, just for fun?"

Instead, I promptly forgot about it.

A few days later, walking through another neighborhood, I came upon another dead crow, almost identical to the first one. Naturally, it reminded me of the last one I had found.

"Wow, two dead crows," I thought. "This must surely symbolize something. But what? I guess I'll look it up."

Again, I totally neglected to look it up and went about my life, not believing in such things as harbingers of doom. Or, to be fair, good luck.

Finally, I was walking down the street, once again in yet another neighborhood, when I came across what appeared to be a dead crow. I say "appeared" because it was badly decomposed. Still, it had black feathers. So, I figured, "Christ, here's another dead crow."

This time, I decided to look up what it meant. So, I turned to the world wide web for help and typed, "What does a dead crow mean?" into Google.

First, I came across smart ass answers.

"It means a crow died," one person suggested.

"It means a cat killed a crow," the next said.

Alarmingly, one person said, "Crows are highly susceptible to West Nile virus."

Creepy. Good thing I didn't lick the corpses.

Okay, so I changed the wording of my search to add a more metaphysical angle on things: "What does a dead crow SYMBOLIZE?"

Guess what?

Dead crows don't symbolize anything. I mean, I knew this already, not believing in magic, but I figured there must be someone out there who thinks dead crows mean something. I mean, it seems like almost everything means something to someone. But apparently not dead crows.

I did run across an explanation of what crows in general mean to Native Americans, but I already knew this, thanks to Brandon Lee and Alex Proyas:

"The crow is a messenger of the Creator and travels between this world and the hereafter. He can pass information to humans and sometimes foretell the future."

Yeah, but what does a DEAD crow mean? No messages? No future? No messenger from heaven/hell to here?

In THE CROW, directed by Alex Proyas and starring Brandon Lee (may he rest in peace), the crow seems to bring Eric Draven back to life to allow him to seek revenge on those who killed him. The killers attempt to kill the crow in order to take away Eric Draven's powers, which include good aim, sweet martial arts skills, and the ability to not die. He's kind of like Neo, only, five years before THE MATRIX existed.

Ultimately, the bad guys shoot the crow, and Eric Draven still wins.

Still, it's hilarious when the main bad guy, named Top Dollar, does a reinactment of the crow's shooting:

"Caw, caw. Bang! Fuck, I'm dead!" he says.

I feel like watching THE CROW now.