It was the sound that came first. There arose such a clatter, you might even say, in the dark before sunrise on the Monday of Christmas week.

I stepped out onto the front porch and saw them: crows, hundreds if not thousands of them, a massive murder circling the large parking lots across the street from our townhouse in northeast Minneapolis. It was not yet 7 a.m.

Scores of black birds permeated the trees, perched on power lines, swept through the sky, filled the cold air with their calls. It was, frankly, ominous. Channeling my inner Hitchcock, I whipped out my phone and captured some footage.

Darkly fanciful thoughts filled my head: could these Minneapolis crows have heard what they're doing to their Olmsted County cousins down in Rochester? Crows, as their human fans know, remember human faces, and have capacity for "analytical thought, planning and flexible behavior," one expert told this newspaper in 2017.

I went back inside, closed and locked the front door. I could still hear them.