Holy mackerel: The “lowly” fish that created Cape Cod’s prosperity

I keep track of the lilac bushes on my way to work, tiny buds as tight as a fist start to slowly unfurl as the calendar turns to May. The peeper frogs have been at it for weeks now, their electric chorus ringing out in the night. Lengthening days are our reward for an endless winter.

This is about crows. Or rather, this is about a crow. I stress the singular, because if there’s any lesson in the incident I’m about to relate, it’s to caution us against generalizing about other animal species. We’re all too quick to talk or write about “owls” or “woodcocks” or “whales,” as though each one we encounter is totally representative of all owls, woodcocks and whales, and that individuality is purely a human trait.

Wild turkeys are a study in absurd elegance. Their body plumage resembles the overlapping scales of an armadillo — bronzed, metallic, armor-like.

We drive down Hummock Pond Road, where a concrete Jersey barrier marks the end of the asphalt and the beginning of the sea. It’s a shorter drive from town than all the way out to Madaket, and besides, there isn’t really a parking lot at Madaket Beach anymore, the erosion has taken big bites out of the pavement.

I spent my teenage years in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a small city on the banks of the Ohio River. There’s not much about the town that would strike a visitor – or a resident, for that matter – as noteworthy.