In the beginning of time Raven was a beautiful white bird who sang beautiful songs, but he also had a bad side of him. He often thought he was the best and challenged others to prove that he was better than the rest at anything he did.

One summer day he sat and thought about an evil scheme to trick the wise old Owl who always told Raven that he was nothing but a big show off. So Raven told Owl he could gather more food than Owl and challenged him to a race to see who could gather the most food. Since Raven was a lazy bird, he planned to steal Owl's food while owl was asleep. And since Raven hunted during the day and Owl hunted at night, Raven thought that in the dark he would have a good chance of stealing Owl's food. The race was to begin the next day.

Raven gathered food all day, often stealing from others smaller than him or stealing from bigger animals when they weren't watching. But Owl kept an eye on Raven all day because he knew this bird was up to something. Towards sunset Raven knew it was time to deceive Owl and steal his food to win the bet. He found a camp fire and rolled in the ash to hide his white feathers, not knowing that Owl knew what he was doing. Seeing this, the wise old Owl put a spell on him saying that he would become whatever he thought he was. Meanwhile Owl filled up his nest with rocks instead of food.

That night Owl sat on a tree branch and watched as the ash-covered Rave slowly crept up to his nest and started eating the rocks. When he finally realized he was eating rocks he tried to cough them up, making a "caw caw" sound. It was then that Owl's spell came into effect and Raven became a black bird who couldn't sing beautiful songs anymore, but could only call "caw caw" and had to spend the rest of his life stealing his next meals.

And Owl was right, Raven was nothing but a show off.

By:Ellen Alstrom
Interviewed by: Fred Alstrom