The rain was falling softly that evening when I first heard the strange cry – not quite a bird call, but a pained sound coming from some bushes near the playground. There she was: a bedraggled crow with one wing hanging awkwardly, her feathers soaked through. She didn’t try to flee when I approached, just looked at me with those intelligent black eyes.
I carefully bundled her into my jacket and brought her home. For days I nursed her back to health, setting up a cozy box with warm towels and bringing her bits of meat. As her wing healed, she began testing her flight around my apartment, then later in the yard. Each night she returned – until one day she didn’t.
Just when I thought she’d gone for good, I heard familiar cawing at my window. There she stood with something metallic glinting in her beak. She dropped an old keychain on the windowsill – one bearing my late father’s initials. These were keys we’d lost around the time of his passing a year earlier, keys we’d never been able to find.
To this day, I don’t know how my feathered friend knew what this trinket meant to me. But now when I hear her caw outside my window, I’m reminded that kindness sometimes comes back to us in the most unexpected ways.
