Hello, welcome and good day!
My partner and I recently moved, and it turns out, we have a bit of a crow situation. In the beginning, I was eager to befriend these crows. Then, my partner disclosed that the squawking crows were getting his goat. He did not want a crow gang upon us and shared he is sensitive to their noise.
We reflected on why more crows were hanging around and figured it could largely be due to the two giant cherry trees in our yard. Cherries I had been cramming into my mouth all spring until I noticed a little white sprig sticking out of one. So, I gave the sprig a little tug. It wouldn’t budge. Instead, it wriggled at me. So, I popped open the cherry and low and behold there were two wriggling grubs inside the cherry. As someone who has been sterilized from the probably somewhat natural experience of eating grubs in perfectly scrumptious fruit, I immediately gasped and tossed the cherry at the base of the tree. I grabbed another cherry and noticed tiny holes. Opened that cherry and again, more grubs. I reached a decision point. To throw caution into the wind and eat the grubs like my ancestors probably did without wasting their time gasping. Or not. Instead, I took the low road and bowed out of eating cherries for the rest of the year. Alright, I admit that was a side-tracked story. Truly, this is about crows. Not eating cherries.
The crows did not seem to mind the grubs. They fancied themselves juicy cherries from our trees. We also noticed that our elderly next-door neighbor had a decent peanut spread on his picnic table, which also likely added to the pleasure of crow snack time.
We couldn’t do anything about the cherries since we aren’t about to chop down two trees. On the other hand, something could be done about the peanuts on our elderly next-door neighbor’s picnic table. When my partner was having a conversation with our neighbor, he boldly disclosed his noise sensitivity and the neighbor kindly said he’d put away the peanuts without my partner even asking.
But my partner wasn’t done yet. He’d been making talk of pointing a green laser at the crows to annoy them so they wouldn’t fancy our backyard. To be clear, there was no intent to hurt any crow. Though I did gasp at him because this was turning my world upside down. He is Nature Boy. Doesn’t smash spiders, takes them outside. Doesn’t step on slugs while hiking, gently puts them to the side of the trail. Now suddenly he wanted to annoy crows. What was happening?
Fast forward, he purchased the green laser and pointed it at the crows in broad daylight to annoy them. He reported, “It didn’t seem to annoy them at all. They just looked at me and didn’t fly away. They didn’t even move.” Apparently, they still did not like the laser. And due to the broad daylight situation and the fact that my partner was not wearing a wig or even a mask, they saw his face.
The problem when a crow sees one’s face is that crows are very smart. To put it into context: adult humans have about 86 billion neurons in their brains, cats have 250-300 million neurons, and crows have 1.5-2billion neurons, even though their brains are much tinier than a cat brain. Obviously, you can’t totally compare cats and crows to humans since they are a different species, but to put this all into semi-context, cats are about as smart as a toddler and crows are about as smart as a seven-year-old. They use tools, solve puzzles, plan for the future, mourn dead companions, recognize faces and hold grudges. And let me remind you, they saw my partner’s face and, sure enough, they suddenly held a grudge upon him.
If you’ve ever had a crow hold a grudge on you, you’ve probably experienced the unpleasantness of that grudge. They seem to hold that grudge until justice is served.
The crows did indeed seek justice. The next morning, when my partner was in the bathroom, three crows were on our roof pecking at him through the skylight. Yes. You read that right. They were on our skylight window, pecking at him in the bathroom. They also took a dump on that skylight while he was there. That same morning, he was outside and another one shat on him right before he had to go to work. He said, “It was so wet, I could feel it all the way down my back.” He read on the internet that crows have very accurate turding aim. I hoped the crows had not lumped me in with his outrageous behavior towards them. I baby talk to crows, OK crows?
I was worried my partner had made a terrible mistake. Were we going to live our lives getting pecked at through the skylight? Would crow turds down our backs be the norm? Did I need to wear wigs and masks? Did we need to move and leave our delicious, delicious cherries behind?
So, my partner did some more researching and found that in order to hopefully reverse damage, he needed to make a repair. Admit his wrongdoing and apologize. He learned that he must offer the crows peace peanuts and eventually they’d hopefully forgive him and stop pooping down his back. He got the whole peanuts. And now he had to secretly feed peanuts to these crows without our elderly, no-longer-crow-feeding neighbor noticing.
The first time my partner brought peanuts to the crows, they refused. I’m guessing they didn’t trust him. He probably needed to earn their trust, maybe by eating the peanuts while they watched, to prove the peanuts weren’t poisoned.
Luckily, he put out some peanuts for them again, while apologizing. The peanuts were gone the next day and the crows have ceased pecking at the window and turding on him for the time being. Also, I have not yet been pecked at or targeted with turds. As for the rest of the tale, more is to unfold.
I do want to point out, it’s a bad idea to point green
lasers at crows. It is rude and could cause decent sized problems dripping down
your back.
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