I read a paper by a dude called Nimmo recently who was saying a lot of things I didn't fully understand and some that I think I didn't agree with, but this concept stuck out. Liminal relationships. These are relationships between humans and other creatures with are based on trusted rather than domination (so the other creature is free-living, not dependent) and in which the human rather than either asserting difference (anthropocentriosm - 'I am the powerful human and that is other and lesser') or sameness (anthropomorphism - 'My cats are little people. They love me!'), instead acknowledges 'alteriety'. It is possible to be intimate without absorbing, knowing, pinning down.
Here is how Nimmo puts it:
Common to each of these examples is some notion of human-animal relations in which the intimacy of mutual being-with-otherness-at-a-distance emerges as a lived alternative to the colonising tendencies of proximate intimacy, restoring the sense of animals as in some sense absent, autonomous, and irreducible to human understandings. In these examples this otherness is not a basis for indifference, objectification or negation, as in the dominant framing of discussions around anthropomorphism in the field, which equate distance and discontinuity with anthropocentrism. On the contrary, difference in these cases becomes the condition of possibility of a companionship at a distance that eschews the anthropomorphic embrace wherein the price of human-animal continuity is a world without radical otherness. Instead, for these liminal ways of thinking and being with animals, the extent to which the animal is like or unlike us loses its central importance; what matters is that the animal exists, that its existence is entangled with but radically irreducible to our own, and that we are privileged to encounter and partially share this other existence, albeit at a distance. - Ritchie Nimmo, 'From Over the Horizon: Animal Alterity and Liminal Intimacy Beyond the Anthropomorphic Embrace'.
This seems to describe my relationship with the crows.
Today, I put the pot of cat food down for CD. Now, he only felt confident with it after he saw the Fluffies eat it. The Fluffies seemed to have no hesitation whatsoever. But CD was reassured by their behaviour. Droopy Wing shows interest in the pot, but she would not approach it on her own. I thought she had, but I was wrong: it was Mrs Fluffy - who likes it on her own because otherwise Mr Fluffy hogs it and she has to wait for him to finish. The crows are very polite about turn-taking. More on this in a bit. Anyway, when Droopy saw CD happily eating from it, she overcame her doubts - though she did keep jumping back. I think the third of the Brave Trio also had a go - but it gets confusing at a distance.
Back to the turn-taking and the three strict pairs - Flying Two, Playground Pair and the Fluffies - seldom eat alone. That makes sense for fear of predation. What seems to happen is that one or both is looking out and the first to arrive will float above the peanuts and then wait for the other. With the first two pairs, the second to arrive nearly always eats first. With the Fluffies, it tends to be Mr.
The Feisty Gang have very individual habits. Three tend to fly off with a nut - one to a tree, and two to various other parts of their territory. One, who looks like Mr Fluffy, let's call him FF (Fluffy Feisty), matches around fairly confidently and another sleek little thing will steal them from the Fluffies or the Flying Pair and fly around me to show her presence and demand more nuts. FF will caw at me, but she is very proactive.
The Driveway Trio feed in either a two or a three, but it's likely that two of them will shepherd me to their feeding place together, going from tree to tree or lamppost ahead of me.One of them may demand more as I walk away by following.
Both of the Flying Two are simultaneously proactive (flying around me, chasing off others to defend their territory) and nervous of me. They like me to turn away and tend to fly away with their nuts. Both the Fluffies are quite brave. Of the others, there seems to be a notable difference in their temperaments regarding me.
And CD, of course, stands out supreme!
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