The True Book of Mostly Unrelated Stories

Bestiaries
by John Mooy

A friend sent me an email a while ago and mentioned the word bestiaries.  As we were all taught in high school when we weren’t absolutely certain of what a word meant, we should look at how it was used in a sentence to see if we could figure it out from that point of view.  

So here you go.  Something I learned in high school coming back to assist me in my learning.  To further explain a bit of the email, my friend indicated she was going to London to do some research in the area of bestiaries.  Understand that our friend is a gifted artist, and her subject areas center primarily on birds.   To go a bit further into her background she has a particular interest in the corvid family of birds specifically crows and ravens.  

Adding a bit of my somewhat limited background with crows and ravens, I know that they are very intelligent birds and are the subject of many studies that indicate just how intelligent they are.  Ravens play a large part in the culture of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest and are often found as the carved subjects on totem poles.  The raven is considered both curious and mischievous and is often referred to as “the trickster.”  

Again, in one of your high school literature classes at MHS you may have read a poem by Edgar Allan Poe titled, “The Raven,” in which Poe explores the feelings of darkness and overwhelming grief.  As your teacher may have mentioned this is a very deep and dark poem.  

So, could this have anything to do with why our friend is going to London to do research?  Does the word bestiaries have anything to do with animals and specifically birds?  The email also indicated that she will bring back pictures relative to this sometimes bizarre subject.  Although I had yet to find the definition of the word, I am interested to find out what it is she will be studying.  Her study I do know is part of a research project.

Now that I have all of this information, I’m still not sure what the word means so it’s time to look it up for a definition.

BESTIARY:  A descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone.

This sounds to me as if it could be a study of stories about animals and what we have learned from them through the ages and when it mentions a moralizing tone perhaps it could be like a fable.  

What I’m about to tell you might be incorrect, but I think you’ll enjoy the story.   This is a story I became acquainted with in my childhood.  It’s called, “The Crow and the Pitcher.”  The story centers on a very thirsty crow who cannot locate any water to drink when he comes across a glass pitcher which has some water in the bottom.  The Crow repeatedly pokes his head into the pitcher but cannot reach the water.  The crow looks around and starts picking up small pebbles and dropping them into the pitcher.  He repeats the process until the level of the water rises to the point where the crow can reach the water and quench his thirst.  I always enjoyed this story and it reflects the intelligence of the crow.  

I have no idea if this falls within the boundaries of bestiaries but who knows.   

And for any of you readers who knew my dad, here is a crow story for you as well.  Dad was a bit of what I would call a bit of and amateur naturalist.  He loved traveling the roads of his mail route and observing the changes in season and the animals that he watched throughout the year.  

This part you may not believe but it is the absolute truth.  When Dad passed for the next seven days at precisely the same time which was 4:20 in the afternoon a crow would fly up and sit on the iron railing outside the back door.  The crow did this for seven straight days without fail.  I began to look for him each day and he didn’t let me down.  Kind of like my Dad.  And after that seventh day I never saw the crow again.

My cousin suggested it was Dad’s way of letting me know he was okay.  All I can say is the world sometimes works in mysterious and wonderful ways.

Have a great week, Marcellus.
You’re the best.
You folks are something to “crow” about.