Seven black feathers still lay on the ground. Reverently, I positioned them next to the empty box.

In my thoughts, I commended the County Road Department. Two hours earlier, I had stopped there to report what I had come across.

“Y’all pick up road kill?” I asked.

“Deer,” the man said.

“Well, I was driving down road my wife and I adopted. I thought I saw a shredded black trash bag. I pulled over to check it out. One piece seemed hung up in a low branch of a tree. It was no trash bag. It was 21 dead crows. One was what I’d seen hanging from the branch.”

“How far from the road?” he asked, as if to imply he wasn’t about to send a crew down into the valley to pick up dead birds.

“Close enough to see from your car, maybe 10 feet from the shoulder. I’m afraid they’ll become a biohazard unless they’re removed.”

“Where about is this? Like from Sugar Creek, how far, which side?”

“Mile and a half, on your right,” I answered. “You’ll see an empty box of Remington shotgun shells with the crows.”

I had to take care of some paperwork when I got home. Also, I made a sandwich, but as soon as I could, I headed back with my camera to where I’d seen the crows. I remembered someone had painted a blue spot on a nearby tree. I pulled my car onto the shoulder and got out to look. The birds were gone. Only the empty box of shotgun shells called “Game Loads” remained. And the seven feathers.

As I picked up the box for my trash bag, I recalled telling the man at the road department, “Someone must’ve waited to watch them roost in their nest for the night and then let loose with the shotgun.”

I told a friend, “It’s hard for me not feel judgmental toward whoever killed those crows. They’re intelligent birds, remarkable creatures. They weren’t near any corn fields. They weren’t causing any trouble. They were in a nest high up in a tree next to an uninhabited section of the road. They were settling in to keep each other warm through a cold night.”

My friend cried, “Where’s the sport in that? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel!”

Or, I thought, like lining people up against a wall for the firing squad.

Nevertheless, as I work at not seeing the speck in someone else’s eye while there may be a log in my own eye, I decided not to dwell on the malicious murder of 21 crows.

At the road department, I asked, “What do you do with the road kill, sir?”

“We eat it!” he said.

“Mainly raccoons and ‘possums,” I joked. “Well, sir, if you’ll have someone remove those birds from the roadside, next time I see you I won’t ask you to eat crow!”