Miranda Ryan – “How to Befriend a Crow”
“An essay that balances a delicate narrative between grief writing, humour and boundary-building. The author manages a delightfully magical elixir: one that allows the reader to immerse in the world of the piece, engage with it, find its sorrow, but also chuckle at its wit.
‘How to Befriend a Crow’ not only is a triumph of a nonfiction essay, but also a field guide to the aftermath of trauma, and how to protect your own sanity in a world that insists on watching your agony. I enjoyed reading this calm, soft, and loving piece. I also learned something meaningful from it.”
(Comments by 2025 judge, Danny Ramadan)
How to Befriend a Crow
Is your therapist advising you to connect more with your community?! Use this simple nine step guide and befriend your local crow!
Step 1. Lose Everything
Befriending a crow in my 30’s was not part of the plan. Nor was becoming a widow in my 30’s. Looking back over the four years since my husband Michael died, it is clear these are inextricably linked.
You might be wondering how he died. A more inspiring question might be, how did he live? That’s when you’ll see my face light up as I picture his smile and think of the kind things he regularly did. Like the time he mowed his best friend’s lawn (not a euphemism) because he arrived there early and wanted to make himself useful while he waited. Or the time he found a set of keys and wouldn’t rest until he returned them to their owner. Or the way he always encouraged me to pause and admire the beauty of wherever we were.
He was an adoring, thoughtful and loving husband and was in turn adored and loved completely. That’s what he was to me if I had to sum it up in a sentence. Which, for horrible reasons, I did. Instead, asking how he died would generate a shift in my gaze. My stare might become blank. I might tense up as I travelled back to that moment. The moment of what happened. It’s a noticeable shift in energy, and different to the vibe you would get from me if you found me on a nature walk. Here you’d find me relaxed, looking upwards, listening intently and observing. I never expected to become a birder at this age. Now I regret not finding it sooner. I hadn’t realized that birds are present-day dinosaurs. People would be a little more hesitant to shit on bird watching if it was called dinosaur-watching.
Step 2. Watch Birds
And the best thing about birding is that if you have a window, you can do it from the comfort of your home! It’s that easy. Try it now. Look out the window. Can you see any birds? You’re doing it! Fantastic.
Looking from afar was good at first, but I wanted to get closer. I started slow, easing into it with a hummingbird feeder. The gateway bird feeder. Marvellous. There are universal truths to be understood when looking into the eye of a hummingbird.
My hummingbird Henrietta was a prime witness to some of my griefiest days. The ones when I couldn’t leave the house. On these days, her presence paused my flow of tears. It was hard to sob uncontrollably while remaining still so as not to spook her.
Still, I wanted more. I purchased a small songbird window feeder. It didn’t take long for this to pop-off as a favourite breakfast spot for the local chickadees, finches, bushtits, sparrows, juncos, and to my great joy occasionally a northern flicker!
I was thrilled. But there were a couple of locals that had notes.
Step 3. Become the Watched
While I had been observing my feathered friends, a pair of crows had also been observing me. The watcher had become the watched. And this crow couple wanted in on the snacks. After trying and failing to access the feeders which just weren’t big enough for them, they brought me a gift. This gift is best described as a white plastic thingy. Perhaps it was originally the top of a razor, or maybe a piece of some kind of clip.
It felt holy and official somehow. Did this gift constitute a bargain of sorts? I felt compelled but had no idea of the parameters. Staring into those expectant black eyes sent me on a trip to the store to stock up on shelled unsalted peanuts.
Step 4. Offer Peanuts
Cut to five giant bags of peanuts later and I was questioning the exchange rate. How many peanuts did I owe for this plastic thingy? The full extent of the contract I’d agreed to was unclear. Crows have an average life expectancy of 7-8 years, however, since the most recent nesting season I was also feeding their offspring. There was no end in sight.
I was no longer just “fond of birds”, now I fed the crows. My crows. Bruce, Shazza and baby Cecil. I reached new levels of bird lady that even I thought possible.
Crow behaviour and intellect fascinated me. I’d watch the Vancouver crow crowds fly west each morning and return around sunset to where they congregated to roost. I’d wonder they went, what they saw, and who else they’d roped into this peanut game.
And maybe you’ve heard that crows conduct funerals for each other. I was obsessed with this idea when I first heard it and had to know more.
Step 5. Be Mindful of Danger Learning
I discovered that what we have interpreted as some kind of community mourning is more likely to be a type of danger learning. Crows have emotional intelligence (convince me that’s not frustration when I’m late with breakfast!) so maybe there is partly some kind of grieving process occurring. However, scientifically that’s harder to prove. What is easier to understand is that their behaviour likely involves curiosity. They are observing or investigating how that crow died to avoid the same fate.
And humans do this too. In a really shitty way.
When Michael died, I was surprised by the amount of people who asked me questions that were inappropriate at best, and straight up harmful at worst.
In the weeks and months that followed his death, as my life had permanently shattered irreparably, so many people asked me how did he die? As I was struggling to get through the basics of the day, they asked, what happened?
This was shocking to me. And it caused me a lot of additional grief. They asked about the intimate details of his death with the sensitivity of a wrecking ball. My loss was extremely traumatic and asking about it sent me back there. I was triggered back to my confusion and devastation. I was crying over his corpse and wrestling my own unanswered questions. Questions I could no longer ask him. They asked as if they had a right to this information.
And it was usually the people with the least amount of “right” to ask me this who did it. The peripheral folk. The new person in the office, the lady at the furniture store, the guy I’d hired to move Michael’s motorcycle.
Step 6. Understand the Caws of Judgement
It’s common for a newly bereaved person to be asked how their loved one died. This was upsetting to learn. They might claim it’s out of care for the griever, but I call bullshit on this. They ask because they want to judge if it could happen to them.
Michael died from accidental overdose from fentanyl poisoning. He’d had an addiction and been in recovery for a long time, and one slip up cost him everything. One mistake cost his life. One use of a poisoned drug ended his life and permanently altered everything in mine.
They wanted to know how he died because they wanted to know it wouldn’t happen to them. He shouldn’t have been doing that. How could he take that risk? Tsk tsk.
They mentally noted that they were okay because they wouldn’t do this. They wouldn’t have an addiction like this. They wouldn’t buy drugs off the street. This type of death was for other people.
They wanted to know what happened because, just like the crows, they were conducting danger learning. And human danger learning comes with unspoken judgement.
When people questioned how he died, it made me feel like his death was less honourable or worthy to be mourned than other types of death. And as a result, my right to grieve as a widow felt less valued. I wondered if they’d have more compassion if he’d died from brain cancer.
It’s a challenging part of grieving a death from a stigmatized loss. And it caused me a lot of additional pain. Pain which is avoidable if we were all a little more comfortable in how we speak about death and talk to grieving people.
None of this was considered by the insensitive nosey neighbour asking how he died.
Step 7. Speak in a Calm, Soothing Voice
I would also guess that the people asking me these intrusive questions have not thought through the potential responses. Like a greedy crow who would make himself sick on as many peanuts as he could gorge, they have not considered the outcome.
From experience, I’m confident they would be extremely awkward if I was honest. They would squirm and seek the nearest exit. They were not prepared to hear the truth of the personal question they so tactlessly asked.
Perhaps it comes back to the fact we’re so uncomfortable with the thought of our own mortality that we feel we should have some control over “how” we die. And we feel the right to be able to judge other people’s deaths. As if another person is less deserving of empathy because they shouldn’t have been doing that.
It doesn’t help. None of it helps. And even if it goes unsaid, the judgement lands heavily. It’s one of the most painful parts of grieving and it sucks.
It’s normal to have these thoughts or questions. But it doesn’t mean we have the right to ask the person at the centre of the loss what happened. What we don’t have to do is put our curiosity and death discomfort onto a grieving person.
Instead, we could ask ourselves if this is the person we should be asking this question, if we have a right to ask this, and are we in an environment to hold the potential answers. Also, like many questions, could you google it?
Step 8. Admire From Afar and Set Boundaries as Needed
I tried several ways to cope with being insensitively asked how Michael died. As I learned more about addiction, and the shame that drives using substances alone, I felt called to be honest. Telling the truth felt like a moral obligation to combat the stigma and shame that keeps many people suffering in silence.
Then, after receiving many unhelpful comments, I withheld information out of self-preservation. I ended conversations to avoid the harmful judgements of people that didn’t have my best interests at heart. I didn’t have to keep dishing out peanuts just because I was being cawed at.
Avoidance proved a useful strategy, but it cost in other ways. It meant losing a chance at connection and being seen in my reality. And it’s another way grieving people learn to just stop talking about their grief.
Now I aim to balance my own grief and need to care for myself with my desire to be honest and ultimately add a voice to reduce the stigma around substance use related deaths.
Step 9. Enjoy a Lifelong Crow Friendship
I can’t choose what happened or the intrusive way people enquire about my most traumatic and life-shattering experience, just like I can’t choose to leave this peanut shelling crow-feeding situation. But I can take care of myself in those moments.
Now if someone pry’s insensitively, I hear the caw of the crows. I can close the curtains if I’m out of peanuts. Not everyone has a right to this information or deserves to hear my story. And I know talking about it is important. I choose how and when I share and make the experience as safe as I can within my control.
As for my crows, let’s assume I’m locked into this watertight peanut contract until I perish. I just hope they appreciate me enough to show up at my funeral, even if it’s just for a bit of danger learning.
~