The unaware crow

The second crow was disgusted by his predecessor's performance and decided instead to use the intelligence his species was famous for. Like he wasn't about to just stick a handful of peacock feathers willy-nilly into his body and then look silly both in front of the ornate birds as well as his own black brethren. So he waited until he had collected a lot of peacock plumage first.

After all, he thought, if scientists have discovered that we're among the very few animals that can look into a mirror and not mistake the reflection to be another animal but recognise the image to be ourselves, we're self-aware creatures. I should be using that knowledge to my advantage. He began by gluing the smaller down feathers in-between his own feathers. Then he took the medium-sized quills and pasted them in the left over spaces till his whole body was covered. Finally, he fixed the long tail plumes on top of his stubby rear end.

When he looked into the mirror at last he couldn't believe his eyes. That wasn't him; it was a peacock! "Now I can really strut my stuff," he said. But alas, when he went to the peacocks they thought he was a grotesquely undersized travesty of their own splendour and shooed him away. And when he went to the crows they thought some outlandishly garish bird had suddenly come into their midst and shooed him away too.

To this day the second crow can be seen sitting by himself in the forest, peering at his magnificent reflection in a pond and wondering if those scientists were right about his self-awareness.