Sunday, February 15, 2009

Jay the Crow



Between the ages of two and four I was bitten by a field mouse, a dog and perhaps most unusual of all, a crow. The neighborhood children named the crow, Jay and each morning he would fly from house to house to be fed. One morning I stepped outside the kitchen door to feed Jay a Frito. As I was feeding him, he nipped my finger. It wasn't painful, but it was noteworthy. I told my mother who was quite alarmed called my pediatrician. According to her, the following conversation transpired:

Mother: "Dr. Rambar, Hugh has been bitten by a crow.
Doctor: very long pause.
Mother: Doctor?
Doctor: Judy, I don't even know what to say to you. I'm going to have to look this one up.

The doctor hung up and called back a few minutes later instructing my mother to put some Bactine on it and then a Band Aid.

From childhood through adulthood, my grandfather regularly began our conversations with "Have you been bitten by anything lately?"

6 comments:

Crafty Dogma said...

Wonderful collage and a lovely childhood story. Where would we be without bandaids?

onehuman said...

Great collage, it fits your story perfectly.

Scrapatorium said...

Love the story and the collage.

Was your mom an over-protective type? I'm thinking my mom would not have called a doctor unless one of us had been mauled by the chupacabra.

Roadside Encyclopedist said...

Given the number of times I visited the emergency room during my infancy: eating poison mushrooms, eating a book of matches, numerous stitches, it's fair to say she wasn't too overprotective. She is a well-known academic in early childhood development and it is all the more amusing to me that I was always somewhere out of view doing things that were always putting me in peril.

Wastedpapiers said...

Lovely story and collage is great!

Punwit said...

Most excellent story & illustration! Maybe your antics were fodder for your mother's case studies? "In spite of superior parenting, 'H' was a mischevious scalawag who even managed to get bitten by a crow".