On my way to the bus stop the other day, I was walking down the street (some of the streets in my neighborhood lack sidewalks) when a crow flew up and landed on the branch of an old maple tree hanging over the street.

The crow was perched directly over where I was walking, so I proceeded with caution. It always makes me nervous to walk underneath birds sitting above me.

It’s not that I have some kind of bird phobia. After all, if you live long enough, you’ll probably get sh-t on at some point in your life, and you’ll find that you won’t die from it. Still, it’s no fun to walk around with splattered clothes.

Fortunately, I was granted safe passage below the branch. Or so I thought. This is where the story gets weird.

I hadn’t walked another ten yards when suddenly—whack! Something crashed onto my head. The object was not sharp, but it wasn’t dull either. At first, as I stumbled forward, I thought a branch had fallen on me. But a whoosh of air from the wings of the crow that had just dive-bombed my head told another story.

That’s right—the crow I had walked past decided it didn’t like what it saw, and it came after me. After strafing my noggin, it floated onto an overhead wire and sat next to another crow, cawing as if to mock me .

If I’d had a shotgun, that would have been the end of said crow.

But I didn’t, so all I could do to retaliate was weakly toss a rain-soaked fir cone at the offending bird. The crow flew off, and I walked away wondering what the hell just happened. I checked my head a couple times, for blood or any other wet liquids, thankfully detecting neither.

I have no idea why the crow decided to hit me. Unless it was omniscient, it couldn’t have detected any bad thoughts from me. Maybe it just didn’t like the way I walked. Whatever the reason, I’m just glad it wasn’t the beginning of this.