The Crows of Pearblossom

Finished January 1

The Crows of Pearblossom by Aldous Huxley, illustrations by Barbara Cooney

This is the only children's story of Huxley to survive. He told stories to his niece, but after a fire most were lost. This one survived because the neighbours mentioned in the story had a copy of it. It was originally written in 1944, but the copy I read was from 1967.

I was visiting my mother-in-law and she had just received it from an order she'd placed. 

The crow mother lays an egg every day and later goes off to do her shopping. The egg is always gone when she returns and she can't figure it out until she returns early one day and sees a rattlesnake, who lives at the bottom of the tree she is nesting in, swallowing her egg. She is terribly upset and tells her partner when he returns, that she wants him to go down and kill the snake. 

Instead, he goes off to his friend Owl and they work out a plan, that goes off very well. with the snake immobilized and unable to eat any more of Mrs. Crow's eggs.