(Pencil drawing of crows by Alexander Kennedy.)
To attract the mirth and excitement of a colony of crows, simply put your trash out on trash day, but make sure that the lid to the can will not close. Then, watch with delight as the crows tear apart the plastic bags and drag your trash through the neighborhood for all to see. Run out of the house in your pajamas and chase after your dignity, one feminine napkin at a time.
Unfortunately, the one member of our house who gets a front-row seat to all of this is Alex, whose room (where he studies and takes his classes online) faces the front street of our neighborhood. Alex is super tired of their shenanigans.
“Dad,” I heard him say one day at breakfast, “it’s like they call out to one another. I can hear them calling to one another when they see our trashcan.”
“Yes,” Nate replied. “Crows are very smart. They know about water displacement. If there’s just a little bit of water in a glass, they will fill it up with pebbles so that the water will rise, and they can drink it.” And Nate goes on and on about all of the wondrous things that crows can do, and when I ask him for his source, he says, “Nature shows! I watch nature shows!”
I believe that Nate has amassed a stunning amount of corvid knowledge from nature shows, but now I want to know more, so I find the Audubon Society website, and there’s an article by John Marzluff from the University of Washington. This article opens with the following ominous words: “The crows in your neighborhood know your block better than you do. They know the garbage truck routes. They know which kids drop animal crackers and which ones throw rocks. They know the pet dogs, and they might even play with the friendly ones. If you feed them, they probably not only recognize you but your car as well, and they might just leave you trinkets in return. These birds live their lives intertwined with ours, carefully observing us even as most of us barely take note of them.”
After reading these words, I’m super concerned. Crows are watching us! They are watching us! They know us. And not one of them has left us a trinket. They’ve gifted our trash trinkets to other people, but they’ve never left us shiny things, and I really, really like shiny things.
As I read the Audubon Society article a little further, it appears that, according to a study that Marzluff and Kaeli Swift published, crows will gather around an effigy of a dead crow and make the association between death and danger. So, it is possible that, if we want to get rid of the crows, we could make an effigy of a dead one and hang it upside down somewhere near our trashcan.
“I’ll get a drawing of the prototype ready,” Alex said. And he wasn’t kidding. As you can see from the sketch below, Alex went dark. Very dark. No actual crows would be used to make the effigy, but I’m sure we could raid a Halloween store to find a crow-like object and hang it upside down.
But something tells me the crows would catch on. The conversation would go something like this:
Destructive Corvid 1: Hey! Trash day! It’s trash day!
Destructive Corvids 2-100: Trash day! Trash day! Go to that one house where the trashcan lids don’t fit. You know where it is!
DC 1: Hey! Whoa! Who’s that? Which one of us is that, hanging upside down?
DC 2: It’s Bob! No! No, not Bob! Just yesterday, I saw him flying around with trinkets for the good children and pets.
DCs 1-100: Oh, Bob! No, not Bob! Let our loud cries pierce the clouds and interrupt Zoom meetings everywhere!
DC1: Wait a minute. If you poke Bob with your beak like this, it doesn’t feel like a real bird.
DC2: Yeah, let me try! You’re right. Remember when we used to case the Halloween store on the other side of town? And they’d bring those stuffed raven decorations in to sell?
DC1: Yep, yep I remember it. That’s what this is. It’s not Bob.
Bob: What’s all the yammering about?
DCs1-100: Bob! You made it! You’re not dead!
Bob: Of course not. You think I’d miss out on prime trash like this?
Working together, they would throw the crow effigy through Alex’s window and laugh while strewing the Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks headquarters trash throughout the neighborhood.
And we will all be sleeping with one eye open from now on.
Your Turn: What are animals (wanted or unwanted) that frequent your backyard or neighborhood?
Fixin' Leaks and Leeks 
Crows! Yes! You read my book–you know my loathing of crows. I just told my daughter, “You know covid, that deadly pathogen that’s taken over the entire world? If you add the letter ‘r’ you get ‘corvid,’ as in, a member of the crow family. That’s how evil crows are!”
But this was really fascinating. I shared it with my girls. When I was reading outside the other day, I could hear a crow in a nearby tree, but I couldn’t see it, for all my efforts. It was not only crowing, but also making a sound that I could only describe as cackling. Seriously. Cackling. At me. Those suckers have got to go.
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They are devious! And. . . they’re watching!
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Allllllways watching… (Monsters, Inc.)
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Up here, we have ravens. They are huge, and they are smart. I once watched three of them execute a plan to take a dog’s food, which they did, very successfully, dish and all. Two of them distracted the dog while the other waited for the right moment and flew away with the bowl.
When I was growing up, my mother had a pet crow (not inside). She was a big gardener and this crow would accompany her everywhere, hopping next to her, talking and cackling. She would tell him he was “handsome” and “a good boy” and fed him twice a day – he kind of turned into a rather portly crow. He would bring her all kinds of shiny things – foil gum wrappers, bits of shiny plastic. He once brought her an earring; she was never able to find out where it came from. Their relationship ended when my mother passed; my dad continued to feed him for a while but one day the crow didn’t return.
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The story of your mother’s crow is beautiful! You should write this story and publish it (if you haven’t already)–I would read it:) Lots of other people would too. Cheers!
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But just maybe it could actually work??? I used to have chipmunks who I loved, even if they managed to get into the bird feeder. The squirrels, not so much.
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I think the crows believe we have benefited somehow from our relationship, though the benefits are not mutual–and the cat is super stressed out by the presence of the crows, which I think, makes the crows happy. We will probably have to just keep that trashcan lid on tight–until they figure out how to pry it open again:)
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Poor kitty:(
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They’re tough customers, and can be real pests. Maybe time to eat humble pie. As I remember the recipe, you’ll need a pocketful of rye, and four and 20 blackbirds.
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I just realized my thought-process on this wasn’t too obvious. It’s just that when people are crowing too much, traditionally they’re served humble pie.
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No worries! I understood the reference:) Cheers!
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Ha! I remember that recipe:)
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My goddaughter spent four hours befriending a crow and now it visits her on her balcony. She gives it food and rubs it’s head and it brings her gifts. She showed me a video she took and it was cool.
I’d be careful riling them up. Don’t want them having it in for you!
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That’s awesome! They are super smart. I don’t want them on my bad side, but I think they already hate us for some reason, and we’ve been leaving them prime trash. Where are our trinkets? 🙂
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I’ll have my goddaughter put in a good word for you!
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I swear these things only happen to your family! I wonder if the Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks headquarters has been enchanted (I don’t want to say cursed!) by some magic user for all kinds of odd and wondrous (or not so wondrous) things to happen!
(And never forget the crows are watching)
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I know! These things always happen to us–but they are something to write about–so there’s that. Maybe that’s the “trinket” the crows are bringing–stories to tell:) Cheers!
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Maybe that’s it! If this is what they’re bringing, they’re being very generous! 🙂
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Bob. It’s always that dang Bob!
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Should I have named him Shane?
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🤣🤣🤣
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