Hydrodynamics and Psychopomps

This morning on my way in to work the hydrants were having problems, spewing water all over the streets (possibly a planned flush, but I didn't see any Water Dept. trucks or workers around). The one on the next hill up from the office was attracting a lot of sparrows to the flow, which had just started to work its way past the corner as I got off the bus.

I slowed to watch the birds playing, and noticed one of them hadn't been quick enough and had been flattened by a vehicle not long before. Poor thing ... and then I wondered, Will a human spirit guide it to some avian afterlife?

In some cultures, birds (most notably the crow in North America, the raven in Europe, and the sparrow on both sides of the Atlantic) are thought to conduct the spirits of the deceased from one plane of existence to the other (brought to popular media by "The Crow" comic books and movies, and perhaps a lesser extent by Stephen King's The Dark Half). Generally speaking, the dark birds take spirits from the land of the dead to the land of the living; sparrows take them the other way.

And then I saw ... The. Coolest. Thing. EVAH. I was still walking slow, watching the water coursing along the opposite curb. It reached the bottom of the dip between the hilltops, shot past the storm drain, and started flowing uphill.

I had to stop to watch, then cross the street to observe more closely. This determined rill just kept going, getting thinner and shallower but still making its way uphill. Finally it reached another drain and that was that.

So now I have to revise my typical point-of-lecture on water and electricity: they usually take the path of least resistance, and flow in very similar manners, but as with most other things in this Universe, once you think you've got it figured out, it will show you how little you knew.