Nicholas Sparks shares a childhood memory in his new book entitled Three Weeks with My Brother.
One day, we spotted a raven in the trees, and were instantly captivated. We began following it as it moved from tree to tree….Pretty soon, we weren’t able to go anywhere near the school without seeing the raven. It was always around. The raven, we soon realized, was following us.
We began to feed it….and the raven grew more comfortable with us. We named the raven Blackie. Blackie was great. Blackie was cool. Blackie, we eventually discovered, was a monster. As interested as we were in the bird, we found out that the bird had become far more interested in us. Particularly our hair. Because we were blond, our hair gleamed in the sunlight, and ravens, we came to discover, love shiny things.
We were at the school one afternoon when Blackie suddenly came swooping towards us, diving at our heads over and over, like a fighter plane attacking a ship. Blackie swooped down and landed on my head, which was quite simply the most terrifying thing ever to happen to me in my young life. I panicked, unable to breathe, unable to move a muscle. I could feel Blackie’s claws digging into my head, and- as if to amplify the horror- Blackie began to peck hard, its head bobbing up and down like the oil pumps in Oklahoma. I screamed. Blackie pecked harder. And that’s how it went. Peck, scream. Peck, scream. Peck, scream. Peck, scream.
His story reminded me of a terrible trauma that occurred when I was a child.
The afternoon was filled with balloons, cake, and fun as Jon celebrated his 7th birthday. We were all gathered at my Granny’s house, eating, laughing and doing the weird things that kids do. At someone else’s prompting, the kids went outside to play and we began a rambunctious chase through the green grass. I was squealing as Jon and David chased me through the yard when the monster of the skies began circling in the clouds.
We saw the shadow on the ground, heard the shrill cries, and looked up to see a bird overhead. I’m not sure if it was the fear of the unknown, or the panicky tone of Jon’s screaming, but I turned pale white and scrunched my eyes shut tightly.
But the fear and panicky tone was nothing compared to the intense pain I felt when the bird swooped down and attached itself to my hair. It had landed in my blond curls and would absolutely not let go. I remember weeping, shouting for my daddy, and then seeing my Papa rush out of the house waving a large laundry basket in the air. Jon was shouting, “It’s a baby eagle!” Mom was screaming, “Stanley, get that bird out of her hair!” Dad was just sort of laughing, I think. But Papa sure didn’t think it was too funny.
In an attempt to knock the bird off of my head, he clobbered me in the head with the laundry basket and I fell to the ground, crying. The bird finally let go of my hair and they kept it under the basket for a very long time. As punishment. Well, actually, it was more like what on earth do we do with this bird?
Pretty Bird (why on earth they chose to name the monster that, I’ll never know) ended up living at Granny’s house until last year. She woke up one morning and he was just lying in the bottom of the cage.