The Strange Behaviour Of The Indian Crows Explains, To A
Certain Extent, This Superstition.
The vultures are, in a way,
the grave-diggers of the Parsees and are under the personal protection
of the Farvardania, the angel of death, who soars over the Tower
of Silence, watching the occupations of the feathered workmen.
The deafening caw of the crows strikes every new comer as uncanny,
but, after a while, is explained very simply. Every tree of the
numerous cocoa-nut forests round Bombay is provided with a hollow
pumpkin. The sap of the tree drops into it and, after fermenting,
becomes a most intoxicating beverage, known in Bombay under the
name of toddy. The naked toddy wallahs, generally half-caste
Portuguese, modestly adorned with a single coral necklace, fetch
this beverage twice a day, climbing the hundred and fifty feet
high trunks like squirrels. The crows mostly build their nests
on the tops of the cocoa-nut palms and drink incessantly out of
the open pumpkins. The result of this is the chronic intoxication
of the birds. As soon as we went out in the garden of our new
habitation, flocks of crows came down heavily from every tree.
The noise they make whilst jumping about everywhere is indescribable.
There seemed to be something positively human in the positions
of the slyly bent heads of the drunken birds, and a fiendish light
shone in their eyes while they were examining us from foot to head.
- - - - -
We occupied three small bungalows, lost, like nests, in the garden,
their roofs literally smothered in roses blossoming on bushes
twenty feet high, and their windows covered only with muslin,
instead of the usual panes of glass.
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