The other night when class was over I stepped out of the Humanities Building and into the cold dark night.  As I walked toward my car I noticed a campus security guard in a SUV creeping along slowly.  His upper torso hung from the driver’s side window and he appeared to be holding something in his left hand.  It was a flashlight, but he didn’t seem to be checking for parking permits.  What the hell is he doing, I wondered.

     When his light suddenly shone upward I could see them, hundreds of crows in the trees surrounding the Special Permit spots.  All of a sudden there was a thunderous sound made by the flapping of hundreds if not thousands of black wings in flight.  It was at that moment I realized I was caught directly beneath an avian shit-storm.  So I booked, books in hand as fast as I could for the faculty parking lot on Dutch Quad.  As I ran I heard the cracking of branches and the cackle of birds, the slapping sound of birdshit hitting the pavement all around me.  Rainlike.

     How I escaped unscathed is still a mystery.  But I’m glad that I did.  I wish I could say the same for my car, and practically every car parked on Dutch.  Naturally, I had my car washed that very afternoon before class.  What a waste.  For those cars parked directly underneath the trees, an ice scraper serves another purpose now.  Albany has to be the crow capital of the world. 

     Since that night I have switched lots and changed my walking route, but still I hear those same sounds, and still I see those same cars covered in fecal matter.  Perhaps this is an awful form of retribution for the destruction of natural habitats.  Just how many trees were cleared in order to build our concrete campus, the Nanotech Building, and Crossgates Mall?  Maybe mother nature is voicing her displeasure through the bowels of black crows in the Capital Region.  Who knows? 

   Is there even a solution to this problem?  Will there be a crow hunt in the city of Albany similar to the recent bear hunt in the state of New Jersey?  Somehow I doubt it.  But I must say I have a newfound respect for those birds which congregate in the boughs between Dutch and Freedom and the old Jewish cemetery on Fuller Road.  Until something changes, they’ll always have the upper hand.