Lessons in Living

Omar is wide-eyed with disbelief and anger, and Mobby is indignation personified.

“This is not fair,” Omar fumes

“I will kill it,” Mobby seethes.

The event which brought forth this repressed destructive urge for revenge transpired this morning. Omar (he didn’t go to school today) and Mobby were playing in the garden when they saw a crow sitting on a tree. It was carrying a tiny egg in its mouth. According to the eyewitnesses' account, the crow was also smiling menacingly. The egg then fell from its beak and the eyewitnesses saw a teeny weeny unformed sparrow spangled in blood and gore amid the eggshells.

Of course, I was made to run outside and see the ruthless spectacle myself. Yes, there it was: the gook.

The menacing raven had flown away leaving in its wake the evidence of its plunder and cruelty.

“Did it steal the sparrow’s egg?” Omar now asks.

“Yes. It seems it did,” I answer.

“But why?” Now Omar’s voice becomes a notch higher with anger and a sense of injustice. Mobby here puts his hands on his hips and utters, “Bad crow, bad bad crow.”

“But where was the sparrow?  Why didn’t it save its egg?” Omar now considers it a case of maternal lapse. Yes, mothers are always blamed for everything.

“Omar, maybe the sparrow had gone out to get some food.”

“It should have taken its egg with it.”

“It couldn’t have. It has just one beak. But maybe it was there in the nest and couldn’t do much about it,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because, crow is so much bigger and it can have its way.”

“But this is not fair. Let's catch all the sparrows and keep them in a cage. Then crows wouldn’t hurt them,” Omar is quickly tumbling ideas in his brain to come up with a life saving strategy for sparrows.

“No Omar. We can’t do this. The sparrows wouldn’t like living in a cage. They are birds, they want to fly.”

“But...” Omar thinks again, is vey angry, and continues, “why did the crow do it?”

“Very bad crow…I will kill it,” Mobby reiterates his aim in life.

“Well, crows are bigger. A bigger creature will try to hurt or kill the weaker and smaller one to get food for itself,” I try to give them a lesson in living, and hear Darwin somewhere groaning in his grave:

“Oh yeah, survival of the fittest.”

Of course, Omar and Mobby are not convinced. They find my nonchalance difficult to digest. How could I stand there and do nothing about it!