Terms of Venery Christine G. Adams (bio) 1 The crow stared at me with its one good eye. The other eye ran down the side of its head—its black feathers wet, made blacker with blood. It was perched on my car. I offered it food, scattering crumbs over the white hood. I filled a saucer with water and offered it to the bird. It would not drink. I ran my familiar three-mile loop, and when my sneakers slapped the hot pavement of my cul-de-sac again, the bird turned its head, angling and focusing its eye in my direction. I watched it from inside my apartment. It tried to fly, its wings sputtering in the humid air, its feathers dusty. I tried to ignore it but couldn’t. I left my apartment, clad in leather work gloves, holding a striped cotton sheet. By that time, the crow had taken refuge in the shade of an azalea bush. I lowered myself to the ground near its pink blooms. The air was cool, dank with rotting leaves, and alive with the hum of bees frenzied by nectar. The crow hopped three paces into the undergrowth. I lurched forward on my belly, half-heartedly tossing the sheet through the branches, knowing already it would not reach the bird. 2 What about your children? I implored the professor groping me outside on a cold winter night. He had untucked my shirt, grabbing for me as I tried to twist out of his reach, and the cold air filled the space between my skin and the floating silk. He laughed. What kids? Who told you I have kids? He chuckled, reaching for my hips. I could see undergrads in the glow of the streetlamps nearby. I thought about calling out to them and then felt the word help sink away from my mouth and into the depths of my chest as he grabbed for my neck and pulled me closer. [End Page 9] I am told that our human intelligence sifts through information, allowing us to remember details that led to threats, to fear, to pain. I am told that the biological need for speech is that sharing information is often vital to survival. An investigator asks me, What else do you remember? I want to tell her that when he grabbed my neck to kiss me it felt as though my tongue became chalk, clogging my throat. 3 Corvids, the family of birds that encompasses ravens, jackdaws, magpies, and jays, are animals that we know to be as intelligent as some of those animals, such as dolphins and chimps, most beloved for their near-human performance on intelligence tests. Researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology note that the birds can both remember what humans have done and predict what humans will do. Crows have the ability to recognize and remember human faces. Researchers, wearing rubber caveman masks, captured and tagged crows. Others, wearing rubber Dick Cheney masks, looked on, neutral. After these encounters, the crows once captured by the cavemen scolded and harassed those wearing the caveman mask. Indeed, on a recent walk through campus, a researcher donned the mask just to see what would happen. He was scolded by nearly every bird he encountered, including those he had never seen or tagged. Scolding is a behavioral term for loud cackling cries and the following of a particular individual. On his walk, the birds’ behavior drew more attention than his rubber mask. His experience led him to develop an experiment which proved that not only do corvids remember faces they perceive as threatening, they also pass that knowledge on to those in their large social groups. 4 I grew up attending an all-girls school in the suburbs of Washington dc. It was where I learned to fold my hands neatly during weekly mass, to wear my gray kilt long enough that my fingertips did not touch the hem when I held my arms at my sides. On Fridays, though, many of the girls would pack into cars and drive to one of the all-boys schools to watch football, basketball, or lacrosse games. In the parking lot, we would...