The Crow and the Pitcher

The summer that year was merciless, and the streams had run low. Crow had flown far that morning looking for water and had found nothing, ponds choked with algae, streams reduced to mud, cattle troughs already emptied by animals that had got there before her.

She was about to turn back when she spotted a clay pitcher half-hidden in the long grass at the edge of a farm. She landed on the rim and looked in.

Water. Not much of it, barely a handspan's depth, far down in the narrow neck of the vessel, but it was clear and cool and real.

She leaned in and stretched her beak. She couldn't reach it by six inches at least.

She tried tipping the pitcher with her foot. Solid, heavy, immovable. She tried wedging herself further inside. Impossible. She hopped down and considered the problem from every angle, the way a crow does, turning her head from side to side.

The water was there. She needed to make it come to her.

Her eye fell on a loose stone near the fence.

She picked it up in her beak and returned to the pitcher. She dropped it in. The stone landed with a quiet splash, and she peered in eagerly. The water had risen, not much, perhaps the width of a blade of grass, but it had risen.

She flew for another stone.

It was tedious work. The pitcher's neck was narrow, and some of the stones she chose were the wrong shape and she had to make extra trips. The sun was fierce and her wings were tired. Another crow flew over and called to her, come, come, there's a puddle by the mill, but she did not go. She could see, with each stone she dropped, the water climbing. Slowly, slowly, one stone at a time.

She kept count in the way birds count, by instinct and persistence.

When the water was finally within reach of her beak she was too tired to cry out in triumph. She simply lowered her head and drank, long and deeply, tasting the grit and coolness of it, feeling it spread through her from throat to tail feather.

It had taken a long time. It had been unglamorous and repetitive and not particularly clever-looking from the outside. But it had worked.

Anyone can have a good idea in a moment of desperation. What matters is the willingness to see it through, one small step at a time, even when the goal seems impossibly far away.

Crow flew home in the long golden afternoon, no longer thirsty.