In this haunt­ing chap­ter, the nar­ra­tor describes a chill­ing scene marked by a stark con­trast between life and death. The land­scape is lit­tered with dead crows—thirty-two in a pre­cise formation—as a result of a crow hunt. The air is frigid, each breath a painful reminder of the cold. The crows, now life­less, are arranged in num­ber for­ma­tions, cre­at­ing a macabre image rem­i­nis­cent of a child’s math home­work. The feath­ers and vacant eyes of the birds evoke a deep sense of loss, and the nar­ra­tor reflects on the com­mu­nal expe­ri­ence of the crows, sens­ing that they may rep­re­sent more than just indi­vid­ual lives, but rather a sin­gle enti­ty divid­ing itself across many forms.

As the nar­ra­tor walks through the scene, they count the crows dis­played for each kill—57, 82, 154—each num­ber a stark reminder of mor­tal­i­ty. The thought of the crows fly­ing over­head, poten­tial­ly observ­ing the bleak after­math of the hunt, leads to intro­spec­tion. The nar­ra­tor recalls Dr. Cor­nel­l’s insight that crows mourn their dead, which rais­es the unset­tling ques­tion of whether these birds com­pre­hend the slaugh­ter of their own kind. This con­tem­pla­tion deep­ens the emo­tion­al impact of the hunt; the nar­ra­tor finds them­selves dis­turbed not sole­ly by the act itself but by the way the bod­ies are arranged, cre­at­ing a mor­bid spec­ta­cle.

There is a com­plex lay­er­ing of emo­tions at play—fear, sor­row, and a poignant reflec­tion on death. The imagery of the dead crows spi­rals into thoughts of girls in a crawl space, height­en­ing the sense of per­ver­sion in the scene—a reminder of oth­er lost lives and the unre­solved trau­mas asso­ci­at­ed with them. The chap­ter encap­su­lates a pro­found med­i­ta­tion on mor­tal­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, and the some­times painful inter­sec­tion of exis­tence and vio­lence, com­pelling the read­er to con­front the uncom­fort­able truths of death’s broad­er impli­ca­tions.