The Crows of Pear Blossom

The Crows of Pearblossom is the first of two children's stories written by Aldous Huxley, the famous English novelist, essayist & critic. In its most known version, the story was illustrated by Barbara Cooney. This story, written Christmas of 1944, tells the story of Mr. & Mrs. Crow, who live in a cottonwood tree at Pearblossom. Due to the Rattlesnake living at the bottom of the tree, Mrs. Crow's eggs are never able to hatch. After catching the snake eating her 297th egg that year (she does not work on Sundays), Mrs. Crow requests that Mr. Crow go into the hole & kill the snake. Thinking better of it, Mr. Crow confers with his wise friend, Mr. Owl. Mr. Owl bakes mud into two stone eggs & paints them to resemble Mrs. Crow's eggs. These dummy eggs are left in the nest to trick the Rattlesnake, who unknowingly eats them the next day. When the eggs get to his stomach, they cause the Rattlesnake such pain that he trashes about, tying himself in knots around the branches. Mrs. Crow goes on to hatch "four families of seventeen children each" & "uses the snake as a clothesline on which to hang the little crows' diapers." He wrote it for his niece, Olivia de Haulleville, who spent long periods of time with him & his wife Maria in their desert house in Llano in Antelope Valley, Mojave Desert, California. They took walks together, & Aldous & Maria would delight in telling stories to the five-year-old girl. When Olivia & her family moved to Pearblossom, four miles from Llano, the Huxleys spent Xmas with the de Haullevilles & made excursions in the desert. Aldous wrote The Crows of Pearblossom during such a holiday in 1944, mentioning in it Olivia's & her brother Siggy's neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Yost. Fortunately the Yosts kept a copy of the story, as the original manuscript had been returned to Aldous with the request that he illustrate it. The fire that destroyed his house a few years later, & his own death in 1963, left the story nearly in oblivion for many years. By 1967, Olivia had become Mrs. Yorgo Cassapidis, living on the island of Hydra in Greece with a five year old daughter of her own, Melina.