My experiences with ravens

I've been trying to get up enough energy to send a message, and let everybody know what has transpired.  You may remember the message sent August 14th about the raven rescued from the roadside, and my experiences with it.  Here's the latest.

On the 16th I saw him again, at the rehabber's, and he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was.  He had a very sad look, and seemed depressed.  I wanted to take him home, but that wasn't possible.  He still remembered me, and was affectionate toward me.  Yet, when I left, the pleading look in his eyes was almost all I could take.

The official word from the vet was that he would probably never fly again, and so was non-releasable.  The laws(1) (federal and state) suggest, if not require, that he be left in the wild to die possibly a long slow death of starvation and/or injury.  As I believe that to be a terrible, unethical thing to do, (on a par with people abandoning their pets in the woods), I was willing to do anything I could to save him.  His life at the rehabber's was also less than ideal, as he had no companionship with anybody or any other bird.  As he got better physically, he got progressively worse mentally.

On Thursday (the 22nd) of last week, I saw him for the last time.  He was doing much better physically, was getting around without difficulty, and had even begun to cache food around his cage.  His mental state, though, was terrible, as far as I could judge.  He had his head feathers puffed out the whole time I saw him, and a really distressing look in his eyes.

Friday night, my raven went to sleep, and never woke up.  I found a message on my machine late Saturday morning, asking me to call.  The rehabber was very upset.  She said she couldn't tell what had caused his death, as there were no symptoms other than a dead raven lying on the bottom of his cage in the morning.

This has been very difficult for me, and I'm just now beginning to recover a bit.  Because a raven has such an unusual effect on people when they're alive, they also cause great grief when they die.  I've had pet dogs and cats die after many years with us, and yet they never caused me to so much as shed a tear.  But this raven was a different story.  I can only believe that God has some purpose for all this, and trust in Him to get me through.  You may recall from previous messages that this is the third raven that I've lost this summer.

I'm attaching a picture I took last Thursday.  You can see his fluffed out head feathers, and distressed look as he seems to be saying, "If you won't take me out of here, then just go away."

I wish I had a better picture, of a happier time, but you can at least see what he looked like.  Notice his missing tail feathers, and the food "cached" on the board to the left.

--
Ethan