Have you seen the size of a crow lately? I have been observing crows for quite some time now and I have come to believe that they have been growing in size in the last few years.  Every morning I find a crow flying straight to my kitchen window as I begin to cook. Yesterday it swooped in, perched itself on the window ledge and cawed loudly for food.  I shooed it away carefully because I have heard that crows have fantastic memories and they recognize faces. I might not be nice to my boss but I will think twice before being rude to a crow.

You can laugh all you want at my paranoia but I have believed for some time that when the world ends and reinvents itself again, the one species to survive among all would be crows.  And if you have seen Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, you might just agree with me. Obviously, you have to take films seriously, to believe that one. I watched this film as a film student during my post graduation and have been scared of birds or rather crows since then.

A town in California is suddenly attacked by violent birds for no particular reason and this series of inexplicable attacks continues and escalates until there are deaths in the town and thousands of birds attack the protagonist’s house and literally break through the roof. The only way to escape is to flee the town or else be doomed to death at the hands or rather the beaks of these violent, merciless birds. The film ends with the leads fleeing from the town in a car even as thousands of birds perched up at every single spot in town watch them go. It is a scary scene to watch and one clearly etched on my mind is the close up shot of a crow watching them and watching us.

Why I single out a crow from among all the birds is because crows are considered to be the most intelligent of species after humans. Some studies have also proven that crows are far more intelligent than chimpanzees who have been famously believed to be the predecessors of humans. Did you know that crows can adapt to any form of climate and environment? Now which other species can do that? You guessed it right. Us. You obviously know that crows are omnivores and have been found to be able to use simple tools for themselves. Remember the story of the crow who throws little stones in a pot to raise the level of the water to quench his thirst? Did I hear someone say, survival of the fittest? The ancient texts and folk tales seem to have already said that and Hitchcock brought their darker side to the fore.

When I finished watching The Birds, I could not understand the reason for the attacks throughout the film. The ending left me unsatiated and I kept looking for a reason until I came across the trailer of the film where Hitchcock himself speaks to the audience not about his film but about birds, in general. He employs a tongue-in-cheek humour to narrate how man has been so “kind” to birds over the centuries by providing them with beautiful cages, giving them a place of honour by plucking their feathers out and using them to adorn the hats of beautiful women and royal men and eating the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.

He then pokes his finger inside a hanging bird cage and the bird pecks at his finger mercilessly. He squeals and wonders why the bird would do that when he had done so much for it? Interestingly the film also opens in a bird shop where the male protagonist is buying a couple of birds as his sister’s birthday gift and happens to meet the love of his life even as both have a conversation about pretty little love birds. In the innocence of the setting, there is no premonition of the pretty birds unleashing their monstrosity in the town of Bodega Bay.

Now obviously, I am not saying that crows are monstrous just because I saw them eating unhatched eggs after an entire group of crows attacked the mother pigeon for at least half an hour until she was driven away to let the crows feast on her labour of love. They are not monstrous. Yet. But I have no doubt that with their evolving intelligence and growing bodies (I have no proof of that one, though), the payback time is not far enough. And the best part is that when humans evolved, they could walk on earth and swim in the waters but could not fly. So they invented airplanes. But you know what? Crows can fly and it might not be long (a couple of million years, maybe) before they learn to do other things as well.

Yes, I know it is all conjecture but who knew dinosaurs would become extinct and might only find a remote resemblance in the creatures that crawl on our walls as lizards and swallow tiny little mosquitoes.

Think about it. Crows might just rule the world. Are you scared yet? If not, go watch Hitchcock’s The Birds. You might not agree with me but I am sure Hitchcock does.

Roopal Kewalya is a film graduate from NID, Ahmedabad and   has been an active independent writer for television, short films and even song lyrics for various organizations. She has also had short stints as a stage actor, a radio jockey for FMII and loves to dabble in all things creative.