Confucius once said that everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. I was vaguely persuaded by this precept until I was recently attacked, upon leaving my house, by an intimidating flock of crows. I find crows uniquely repulsive — it’s some combination of their unpredictable fluttering, irritating shrillness, and also probably their near-daily attempts to dent my prefrontal cortex. So I shrunk meekly back to my front door and drowned my woes in a bowl of Lucky Charms. Confucius, I’m convinced, was never witness to the ghastly, wailing, cries of a Northwestern crow.