Spectacle
There is a moment, in Fernwood during the summer, filled with crows. Emerson first drew it to my attention, and we have since taken to calling it crow time (original I know). It is that time of dusk, just before sundown, when the crows range through the valley at the bottom of the Fernwood hills, where Bay crosses FW. Sitting on the front porch of the Denman Street House, about a block from this intersection, you can hear them calling, and watch hundreds of black birds, flying, from roughly southwest to roughly east northeast. It takes minutes for them to pass overhead, and when they do you feel you've seen something special, some little insight on the natural world. Even when it happens every day.
I had my first moment like that yesterday, and it made me think of the crows. The driver for my mother's project, Elisha, had been showing me around Accra, and we were heading back to the hotel. It was four o'clock, which meant one and a half, maybe two hours until dark. As we drove along this tree lined boulevard (the trees, I later learned, are the 'magic' neem tree of permaculture fame--they grow everywhere here), I noticed this swarm of something in the air ahead of us. Bats. Big bats, too; not like our little western bats the size of sparrows. No, these bats had a wingspan of at least a foot. There were thousands and thousands of them, hanging from the tops of these neem trees, swarming the air, chasing eachother off branches, calling to eachother. Playing in preparation for the hunt. And they were beautiful.
This, apparently, happens every afternoon. They dance above the heads of hawkers and drivers. A kind of rush hour natural display, to entertain people stuck in traffic. Naturally there's much debate about how to get rid of them, because we can't stand the thought of sharing our space, but I thought they were incredible. And apparently they're considered a delicacy by some, so how bad can they really be?