A murder of crows halts India’s trains

For a change, a different kind of murder, that of an avian variety, rocked the state of Bihar, yesterday. A murder of crows (yes, that’s what a group of crows is known as) snapped the overhaead power lines of the Indian Railways, in the state that is the birthplace of Laloo Prasad Yadav, India’s minister of railways. The crows were protesting the disruption brought upon them by the Railways workers who had been clearing the crows’ nests to address the increasing number of short-circuits seen on railways power lines, a fallout of a large number of crows fighting or flapping their wings. The corvidian protest halted the trains in their tracks until railways workers finally managed to restore the power lines. Crows, one of the commonest corvidian bird species found in India, and is indeed deeply rooted in the Indian consciousness. It sometimes considered as an avatara of the dead relatives who revisit their loved ones on the 14th day after their deat...