For all the years we’ve lived here, cool autumn dusk has been the Time of the Crows. They fly in thou­sands, in con­verg­ing aer­ial streams, call­ing out their plans as they come back into town from their days in the hin­ter­lands. They’re seek­ing out one another’s com­pany and roost­ing in some unlucky city block or sub­ur­ban wood lot, some­times mov­ing to a new roost when it gets too noisy or offen­sive or unseemly (for crows) at the cur­rent one. There they stay the night in the dark warm ever­greens or over the steam tun­nels on cam­pus, and crap all over every­thing, and then care­fully wake every­body up in the morn­ing fly­ing off to their day jobs, back in the hin­ter­lands, where they can get back to the impor­tant busi­ness of bait­ing squir­rels and pick­ing at eyeballs.

I know they talk to one another. I’ve watched them for a long time, and I hear the dinosaur in their voices more than any of their kin. They, I’m sure, are the smirk­ing descen­dants of the ones that killed all the oth­ers off: the world-​​enders of the last time ’round.

But of course that’s just my imagination.

Tonight’s the sort of night they should be stream­ing across the sky. It’s chilly, but not freez­ing yet. Clear. Good night to find a roost in town.

I count three. I saw more than that this sum­mer, lying dead on the lawns.

Who knows? Maybe they’ve moved off some­where else, some­where safer. Surely they have their folk sto­ries of pre­vi­ous plagues. Maybe they’re just lurk­ing, wait­ing for this West Nile Thing, or the flu they’ve heard about, to make its move and build them their next bub­ble economy.

I hope so.