Would you touch a dead raven?
I wouldn't.
We’ve been out at Frog’s Glen a few days now. Until yesterday morning, I wasn’t sure what I’d like to write about this week. Fragmented thoughts kept turning over in my head.
I took Terashima-kun out for an early morning walk determined that I’d use the time to come up with a plan. We set off southward across the long, interlocking stretch of rice paddies that lead out to a road that meanders as far as the coastline several miles away. The sun was just cresting to our left and was already hot enough to sting my cheek.
I made our usual turn at Shibata-san’s machinery sheds, and we started to climb another exposed road out to Highway 86. The thick bamboo groves here are too far away to cast a shadow over the road much past 5AM. We were on a 200-meter slightly uphill stretch you wouldn’t think twice about walking in normal weather, but yesterday was different. I gulped hard on the cold Pocari Sweat bottle I was carrying and felt a bit dizzy in the heat.
I was talking out loud to Terashima-kun as I often do. Who knows what I was saying, maybe something about what kind of breakfast I want when we get back or “at least there’s a bit of breeze this morning right, boy?” Suddenly on my left, from Shibata-san’s vegetable patch—which for some reason this year has morphed into a wildly overgrown, poorly tended weed garden—I heard a man’s voice. He was speaking to me.
“Damn thing was eating away here, but I got him,” he said. It was all very out of context since I didn’t even know who was talking let alone what was eating away at what thing.
Shibata-san himself emerged from the weeds. We smiled and said good morning. He was tangling with a ball of what looked to be clear fishing line and a huge dead raven ensnarled in the mess. The raven was wings outstretched, rigor mortis-like. Almost seemed stuffed or like a toy. It seemed to be frozen in a pose of terror flight.
Shibata-san looks like he spends all his time outdoors, and indeed I almost always run into him as he is standing by some field or walking from one place to another. I never see him at a house or in a car—come to think of it I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him sitting.
He dresses like all “real” residents of this area—covered head to toe in long pants, long sleeves, high boots, and he always wears a wide-brimmed straw hat. He might be bald, or have a huge head of hair, your guess is as good as mine. His face is baked, almost coffee colored. He is quick to smile…broadly and genuinely.
As he talked to me, Shibata-san continued to work at unraveling the knotted line which had, it seems, tied up just the raven’s legs.
“He was lunching on my watermelons, but this trap worked! First time!” Shibata-san was beaming.
I noticed he was bare handed, no gloves or anything. He kept unsnarling line, grabbing raven feet and wings, unsnarling, and unwinding. I thought how many dead things I was taught to never touch when I was a kid.
“First time for me to see a dead one,” I said. “It’s huge.” I asked him if it was heavy and he motioned that I was welcome to come on over and give it a heft but I demurred. Nah, that’s okay, Mr. S.
I wondered why the raven had died, but didn’t ask. Just getting caught up in a ball of fishing line by the feet doesn’t kill a bird I was thinking. Did Shibata-san find the bird flapping about and then go in and give it a stomp to the head? The frozen-in-time, wings prone look really seemed to speak of sudden death…but who am I to guess.
Before any killing, Japanese farmers deploy many “scare away” contraptions in their fields. They use stuffed scarecrows, mylar tape and old CDs which glint and glare in the sun, giant paper kites that look like 15-foot birds of prey that then wildly swoop in the wind, and even random “boom” machines that sound like gun blasts—all aimed at startling critters looking for food. The only traps I’d ever seen until now have been boar cages. I really need to look the raven fishing line trap up to better understand how this works…
I can hear you mumbling, is death really necessary. But I think I’ve come to get it. If I was farming half of the year and in one morning lost half my crops to a damn bird and his friends I’d be researching death too.
I’m really liking Shibata-san. He is a rare Japanese male—particularly of his 70s age group. Older dudes in this country tend to be of that “God forbid I will need to speak English with this alien E.T. person” and “God even more forbid I make a mortifying grammatical mistake while trying to do so” generation. Even when confronted with a fluent foreigner, old dudes usually freeze up and try to find any way to escape the horrible, unfair situation they find themselves in.
Risk management, I say. Toru, who tends to lock and load with an icy stare, disagrees. “You think too much. They’re just idiots with some sort of brain-freeze filter installed.”
But not Shibata-san. He is more like an older Japanese woman in this sense. He just starts blabbing away in Japanese and whether you are staying with him or not continues as if you’re his best friend.
The other day I was rounding the same corner with Terashima-kun and Shibata-san actually tagged along with us. I couldn’t believe it. He chirped on about the valley, typhoons, Tera’s breed and qualities, the price of fertilizer, why nobody cares if the festival falls on a Wednesday, and who lives where. I kept expecting him to say, “Well, nice chatting but I have to head over this way,” but he never did. He kept with us for the entire dog walk.
Shibata-san asked me my country and occupation, and he told me (not surprisingly) that he is a born-and-bred in our valley. I’m still not precisely sure where he lives—it’s on one of two dusty corners near his machinery sheds I would guess.
I’m sure it’s a ‘lifelong city boy comes to live in the countryside’ phenomena, but I am fascinated by people who grow long rows of sweet potatoes or who untangle dead birds bare handed while chatting about the weather.
A few weeks ago, Toru and I walked up to the Community Center for a special sale of boar meat held by hunters. I couldn’t help myself and I asked one of the younger guys if they themselves shot the boars. He gave me a bit of an odd look and in a half-answer said each came from one of the traps in the valley hills. I wanted to follow up with, “Yeah but when you come to one in a trap do you then shoot it…or what do you do?”
I left the question unasked.
Thanks for the walk that I felt like I was on.
Touch it with a stick and chase the young people... deeeead biiiirrd.