Among the phrases I have never trusted are the collective nouns associated with animals — a murder of crows, a scurry of squirrels, that sort of thing. They turn up mostly when people are making lists of collective nouns associated with animals, and their roots — if they have roots — are usually never mentioned. All in all, they reek of a kind of linguistic cleverness I find far too cute. Plus, they're all too easy to make: a puddle of poodles, a terrine of terriers, a rumpus of reptiles, etc.
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The other morning I heard what sounded like the rattling of geese in the sky. I looked overhead and then scanned the horizon. In the north, above the trees shading a dry creek bed, there were a lot of crows. A bunch of them. I'd go so far as to say that it was even a crowd of crows. Dozens, in any event. They settled into the trees and then roiled upward, like ash and cinders from a fierce fire. The sounds they were making were too sharp and staccato to be called cawing. They no longer sounded like geese to me. They sounded like timbers snapping in a fire that seemed to be heaving them skyward.
I have no idea what brought them together there. They weren't about to migrate, and they didn't look as though they were scavenging. I felt as if I were looking in on a corvine colloquium to which I had not been invited.
When I go outside, all too often I hear what I expect to hear, only to find it was something else. Those crows didn't really sound like geese, but coming from skyward, I thought I should be seeing geese. Lately, the wind has been roaring through the bare trees in the night — always a disquieting sound. The other night it seemed to be roaring again. And then I realized it was a freight train, one of the oldest and most settling sounds I know, wheels clacking, rails ringing as a boredom of boxcars rolled down the valley.
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