Baby Ravens in the Chimney
Branding season is in full swing. Although my school schedule prevents me from going for another couple of weeks, we have a young friend of the family up from Reno to help out. She and I ride out in the afternoon after I get home from school, exploring. We find a nest of baby ravens in an abandoned chimney, just about eye level on horseback in the late afternoon sunshine. They are big, pointy-beaked sooty things, flattening themselves into their tangled mess of sticks and baling twine and lumps of old sheep wool. They almost overflow the nest, the three of them; blink their cold blue eyes at me, and it's a wonder that they don't fly.