Before I even thought of getting out of bed, I knew that we had a Situation.
Somebody was bleating outside my window, one crackly note in a massive cawcawphony. It was the intermittent outbursts of human shrieking that nailed down the situation. Shit, it wasn’t even 6am.
The blue-eyed baby crow had landed.
I got myself a cup of coffee and listened throughout the morning as one crow eruption after another went on. Duly caffeinated, I ventured to the front porch. With my camera.
Sure enough, some poor young woman was hunched over on the sidewalk trying gamely to get to her truck to put in her luggage. She was clearly coming from the AirBnB down the street and thought she could make her escape from Portland in a smooth and unobtrusive manner, but her timing intersected with when a new member of our crow family hit the ground. I couldn’t see the baby, but it was nearby, and it was being stoutly defended. The young woman was flat terrified.
It’s a pretty slick plan. Any time a human being over five feet tall is completely undone by a bird that weighs, tops, a pound, you know you have a good system going. The thing about baby crows is they have to spend a few days on the ground without the ability to fly. I have not witnessed the part where they flop helplessly out of the nest a hundred feet in the air but I imagine it involves some crashing into branches on the way down to soften the impact. Because when they hit the ground, they are pedestrians. Only. For a few days.
I wasn’t able to capture on video the spectacular act of terrorism visited on that particular young woman, but after a while another one came down the street, this time on the other side. When she got close, the crows started in. She froze. She was a sculpture of Terrified Woman With Luggage.
“Do you need an umbrella?” I hollered.
She admitted she had been dispatched from the AirBnB. “My wife just tried to get to the car,” she said, shakily. “All she could say was ‘The Birds! The Birds!’”
I explained what was happening, with the grounded baby bird and all, and how natural it was—I mean, no one wants to pop out on a given day and conclude the avian world is Hitchcockingly aligned against them—and she was grateful for the information.
“They’re friends of mine,” I said, of the crows I’d been feeding peanuts to for years. “Maybe I can escort you to your car?”
I wasn’t sure I could, but I went across the street. We made it without incident, she got in the car, and all was well. I was actually surprised. Apparently my good name among the local crows was intact. How about that!
Ten minutes later I went back out, hoping to capture some good blog video for y’all with a random passerby. “My friends” promptly dove at my head like it was a piñata.
I don’t know why they didn’t before. Maybe I showed up during a shift change.
A few years ago, I randomly mentioned to my spouse that I’d like to have a personal crow that I could raise and train, so that I could astonish guests by stepping out onto the porch and calling him. Not long after, spouse found a baby crow on the ground. We hadn’t known that this was a normal part of their fledging and thought it might be injured, so we captured it. Spouse was ridiculously proud of having fulfilled the first and most essential part of my wishful thinking: acquiring said baby crow. The poor parents were quite upset but the baby seemed to be having a good time. He ate some canned dog food and posed for a few pictures before we set him back on the ground in what we figured was a safe spot. The parents followed and kept up their fussing. I apologized for playing with their baby. I named him Petey. Off they went.
Hitchcock used crows for many of his scenes, but the birds in the original DuMaurier were robins and finches. At first.
“Fussing.” That verb is cleaning it up quite a lot.
My favorite scene in the story was the plunging gannet. After I saw video of them doing that into the water after fish, I liked the scene even better.
My great-aunt had a plunging gannet, but they put in some surgical mesh and it helped a lot.
Your yard looks wonderful in your short video! I love it! Also your voice sounds more melodic than I expected. I guess I expected a more sarcastic-sounding voice. I hope that once the baby is off the ground, y’all will be friends again, and have another crow to feed peanuts to. Thought of a name yet?
Oh, it’s going to have to be Booboo at this point. I’m not proud, but there you are. And thanks! Maybe some day I’ll post a real garden video when it’s in super shape.
And Mimi, if you ever want to hear me actually reading something, you should head on over to murrbrewster.substack.com where I have all the same crap I have here, but with an audio embed. You don’t have to join substack or subscribe (for free) to read, but you COULD.
Except that THIS time, I couldn’t find you reading it. Not on the iphone OR the computer! I was disappointed because now I am spoiled and used to having you read the blogs to me twice a week, so you can imagine my pique at having to actually read it myself!
Fixed! Dropped the ball that time. I just recorded it and jammed it in there.
Murr, I just went over to Substack and heard your voice for the first time. It sounds like it belongs to a woman half your age, or perhaps a third. You are vocally superbly preserved.
Why thankee kindly sir. I am preserved in beer.
Shortly before I was asked to vacate the parental premises I went through a new phase of bird feeding. I bought feeders, made feeders and bought bags of bird seed. We had feeders viewable from the kitchen, dining room and my bedroom.
Then I discovered that Mom had the habit of buying steak, cutting the raw meat off the bone and tossing the bloody bones. I inquired and was given permission to put out the bones and see what showed up.
That turned out to be crows and darn quick. They liked to do their dining in private and would pick up the bones and fly them over the backdoor neighbor’s fence and deposit them behind her above ground pool.
I sorta knew this was happening, but didn’t get my confirmation until pool season started. The back door neighbor hailed me and told me she’d discovered a pile of steak bones behind her pool, topped with a dead bird. She didn’t ask if I knew about it, just wanted to share the joy. If she’d inquired with other neighbors they would have immediately known that I was some how responsible.
Wait. Back up. Topped with a dead bird? DID YOU DO THAT TOO?
Maybe the dead bird was a garnish. Crows do have a finely developed aesthetic sense.
I only provided the materials for the crows’ art installation, but not the dead bird. They brought that in from some place else.
Great video. According to Google crow translator, one of them was saying “hey, get out of my yard and find someone else’s kid to sneak up on!” Other parts just came thru as “#$@&* off #%*@ off”.
Mostly the latter, I know.
My local crow family’s baby hit the ground a couple of weeks before yours, but although loud they didn’t actually attack either me or my Honey dog, who loves to investigate the rear ends of our chickens and was apparently engaged in a similar activity with the baby until I called her away. For the next few days she would locate it, say hi, and move along. The crows here make out pretty well what with all the things thrown for the chickens, so maybe that was the source of their forbearance.
The rear ends of chickens must be no end of fun for a dog. They are a mess.
My Boston Terrier, Sam Addams had very definite ideas about other dogs’ butts. She was a fairly indiscriminate and eager sniffer of butts until one day when the dog she was sniffing took a dump practically in her face! And Bostons having such flat faces, that meant practically all over her face.
She backed up with a look of horror and disgust, mucous pouring from her nose and mouth.
To my knowledge she never sniffed another dog’s butt for the rest of her life and really didn’t want other dogs sniffing hers.
OMG!! I love it!
Not always. Usually my hens have quite well-formed poop that doesn’t really mess the feathers. But not always so I guess they have good days and bad days like the rest of us.