the secret of black

...And after all the other birds were up and about their affairs--even after the jay, who would burst each morning from the mist, screeching in a blue rage at these damned early birds who never let a fellow finish his rest--the crows would make their stately entrance. From the tops of the firs they would swoop, laughing with a sort of pitiless amusement at the lesser birds, and circle away in a slow, disorganized flock bound for the mudflats, sometimes leaving her feeling strangely disturbed. Perhaps because they reminded her of the magpies from around her Colorado home--carrion eaters, lining the rabbit-killing highways, living off death--but she thought there must be more to it than just that. Magpies were, all in all, rather silly birds. The crows, for all their raucous laughter, never seemed silly....

Again in the evening she often saw through the barn window the crows returning from their daily contest with the pigs; sometimes one or two were conspicuously maimed, or even missing. She didn't know about the pigs, how they were taking the contest, but, win or lose, the crows always laughed--the hard, old jaded laughter that came of looking at the world with a black and practiced eye. From the less skillful the laugh might have hinted of despair, or silliness, like the magpies', but the crows were masters of the wry outlook...they knew the secret of black, that it could not be made blacker, and if neither could it made lighter, it could still be made funnier.

~from Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion