I opened a ten-year-old document and found a draft of an email to a “Steve.” Through the years I’ve known dozens of Steves, including my dear friend Steve Cohen (“The Millionaires' Magician”), but I don’t recall who this Steve was.

Hi Steve,

I was watching a TV program and thought of you. Or, more accurately, I thought of the beautiful principle you champion: in business and in life, you should give to get, or give more than you could ever hope to get in return.

Apparently, the principle doesn’t work with humans only. I’ll explain.

The TV program was a BBC show, “Weird Wonders of the World,” and it profiled a girl from Seattle who had a bunch of clear, plastic carrying cases. Each case held dozens of small, bizarre curios: earrings, beads, metal nuts, screws, buttons, charms from necklaces, and so forth.

Why was she saving these odd things? Each was a gift from wild crows.

The girl put up feeders in her backyard, and she’d devotedly refill them with seeds and peanuts. When the crows swooped down she’d watch them and talk with them. She spent loving time with them.

After a while, these crows would reappear at the feeder with a trinket, which they’d drop near her before they’d eat. Over the years they’ve done this hundreds of times. (One returned the girl’s camera lens’ cover. Another gave her a crab claw.)

Crows apparently are one of the animal kingdom’s smartest creatures. They can use tools, and some tests show they’re smarter than dogs and cats.

The practice they are exhibiting is called “gifting.”

The young girl (at the time of the TV show she was 8; now I think she’s 13) gave to the birds without thought of remuneration, and they decided to repay her.

Anyway, I thought it might bring a smile. If you want to read about it and see photos, here’s a link to an Audubon article: www.audubon.org/news/seat…

All my very best,

Mark

What a strange and wonderful story. It feels like a modern fable, a small piece of magic in the everyday world. It reminds me of a quote I found years ago in a magic book from the 1970s, attributed to a Dr. Jurvis, whose identity is another mystery to me:

" . . . a harmless mystery, left unexplained, will add to the very meaning of life itself."

Perhaps the “why” of the crows' gifts is less important than the fact that they happened at all.