By Clara Wade Clemence (of East Killingly)

I was afraid of him and he knew it. When I was very young that crow made my life miserable. When I went out to play he would dive at me. I carried a stick. He wasn't afraid of that.

My rubbers disappeared from the vestibule. Aunt Dell and I saw them in perfect order, as he found them. But they were on the roof of the outdoor toilet.

Then one of my red mittens was among the missing. That was on the wood house roof. That crow dropped it to the ground. We always thought that was an accident on his part.

Grandma Easton was the worst sufferer. That crow would pull off the clothes pins as fast as she could put them on her line. He would go to the neighbors and play the same trick.

He was Aunt Nettie's pet. It was she who put him to bed. He would mind no one else.

He escorted her and her sisters to the one-room school and went home to meet them on them on the return trip.

He disappeared one day. Nettie thought her father disposed of him because he was such a nuisance.

Nettie had a short life, her father a very long one. In his late days he talked of Nettie's crow. "Nettie thought I disposed of him. I never did," he said.

Something to think about?

A couple today will be the ancestors to over 20,000 people over the next 200 years!