The following is the third status report on my mission to befriend crows. If you need a refresher, you can find the previous posts here:
It’s been about a month since my last report. A report that concluded on a happy note with the arrival of two crows! Also some exciting new upgrades to the Crow Plate Pole which bumped it up to version 2.1!
But sadly, we’ve been unable to maintain this positive momentum, and now it seems we’re trending downward, despite another successful encounter that had us feeling rather optimistic. And perhaps… overconfident?
Let’s focus on the good first…
It started with me adding a new upgrade to the Crow Plate Pole Version 2.1. I installed a secondary plate directly below the green primary peanut plate to serve as an offering plate. It’s well-documented that crows like shiny objects, and they’ve been known to not only accept shiny gifts that are left for them, but to actually leave their own gift of shiny objects to their benevolent benefactors as a token of gratitude. How awesome.
I was getting ahead of myself, and I knew it, but I thought that placing a nice shiny object near the peanuts could only be a positive move, right? The crows may not yet recognize this shiny object as a generous offering from their hopeful host, since we simply haven’t reached that stage in our relationship, but it should at least attract their attention and possibly direct it up to that big green plate of delicious unsalted shelled peanuts above it that I continue to fill every morning precisely at 7am while wearing my brimmed Crow Hat. Or so I surmised.
Well I quickly learned two things:
- According to the “/crows” community on Reddit, shiny objects are actually a deterrent when trying to court them. Naturally cautious corvids that they are, crows apparently see the glimmer from the object as a possible concern rather than a point of curiosity and are more likely to shy away. At least before they’ve grown comfortable with their new environment.
- I don’t think I know what “shiny” means.
For my initial offering, I chose this:
It’s a Guinness shamrock necklace from St. Paddy’s Day. Take a good gander at it and you’ll notice something important. It ain’t shiny. The shamrock medallion is just green plastic. And the beads are well, I don’t know what the hell they are, but they ain’t shinin’ either. I think I just got excited about sharing my love of Guinness with my potential party pals and I bypassed the logistics.
Well, call it the luck of the Irish, because that unshiny but badass plastic amulet seemed to work. The very next morning while I was sitting at the kitchen table, I watched through the window as a crow flapped into view and perched on the fence directly across from the Crow Plate Pole Version 2.1…
Wait… With its newly installed offering plate, the Crow Plate Pole Version 2.1 requires a minor version upgrade:
I watched as a crow flapped into view and perched on the fence directly across from the Crow Plate Pole Version 2.2.
“Holy crap, Sab!” I whispered loudly to Sab who was in the kitchen. But I didn’t say, “crap.” I said “shit.”
And then I said, “They’re back! The crows are back!”
Heroically, I grabbed my phone off the table to snap a pic of the most direct, clear view of a crow through a window that I’ve experienced thus far… well, except for those damn window blinds chopping up my visibility into little annoying strips of outside.
I snapped the first photo!
It sucked. A bunch of window blinds and maybe a bird back there somewhere.
I zoomed in while trying to maneuver the phone so that it focused through one of the openings in the blinds. I snapped the second photo!
It sucked. But that big black blur that might be my thumb could possibly be a crow?
I continued to scramble and fumble around with my phone, cursing, panicked, losing my cool as the one chance to capture proof of my elusive future crow bros all but eluded me. Sab, on the other hand, busy making herself breakfast while simultaneously talking on the phone, casually opened up the Crow Pro camera app and hit record.
The Crow Pro camera captured 3 minutes of video of not just one crow, but three of them! And three is enough to be considered a group, right? Well hell yeah, then we had ourselves a murder out at the Crow Plate Pole Version 2.2! A murder of three just hanging out, pecking around on the ground, taking turns sampling from the plate atop the Crow Plate Pole Version 2.2. It was the coolest thing, dudes.
Here’s are a couple stills from the video:
And… uh… here’s one of the photos that I took:
It was sure one hell of a party, and I looked forward to many more crow soirees with my new Ride or Dies. But they turned out to be One and Dones.
That was the last visit from the crows.
I don’t know what it was about the party that turned them off. They seemed so happy out there. But clearly, something made them act like I’d proverbially pooped in the punchbowl. I committed to resolving whatever it was that had pissed off my pals, and winning back their friendship. I now had myself a new mission!
And then the squirrels returned…
Those furry-tailed little assholes came back with a vengeance, man. It’s like someone had forwarded them the Evite to rub it in that they weren’t invited to the crow party, and they were pissed and resolved to make me regret ever attempting to ghost them.
It’s been a slog since their initial attack, my friends. For the past two weeks, I’ve religiously slapped on my brimmed Crow Hat and headed outside to deposit 10-15 unsalted shelled peanuts in the Crow Plate Pole Version 2.2 at 7am sharp, and the damn plate gets cleaned off faster than the birthday cake leftovers in an office break room. Nothing left but 10-15 empty unsalted shells.
Oh, and if that’s not enough, once one of the little bastards POOPED IN THE PLATE!
“Thanks for all the peanuts, Bones. Please accept this token of my gratitude.”
These sons of bitches, man. These sons of bitches…
If they want a war, I’ll give them a war.
Over the last couple days, I’ve been dusting the peanuts with cayenne pepper. Apparently it’s fatal to squirrels. I’M KIDDING. It’s harmless, but they don’t like capsaicin, the compound that makes peppers hot. Birds don’t have the pain receptors that are affected by that sweet sweet capsaicin heat, so they don’t care.
At least, that’s what the internet says. But the internet kinda sucks. So far the squirrels also seem unbothered by the cayenne pepper and continue to chomp away. Or maybe now they’re just angrier and are ripping open the peanuts to spite me. Regardless, they’ve crashed my crow party and they won’t leave.
I need to convince the crows to return so they can outflank the squirrels and retake what is rightfully theirs. But how do I do this?
Along with peanuts, crows apparently love a good bird bath, so I’ve made one for them. I placed it on the ground and encircled it with rocks to make it feel natural because they like natural. And so do I because I’m a dirty ass old hippie.
But I need more…
I need to come up with some way to really grab their attention during a crow flyby. Something of “See Rock City” caliber.
A beacon. A beacon is what I need. Indeed, some type of crow beacon. Or Kevin Beacon. Yes, yes, I think I’m on to something here. A Kevin Beacon. But, what IS a Kevin Beacon?
I will knows when I knows. And thus will the crows.
Next steps:
- Figure out some type of squirrel baffle that can live above the peanut plate without impacting crow ingress/egress. The squirrel baffle underneath the plate has kept the squirrels from climbing the pole and accessing the plate from the ground, but my air defenses are nil and they know it.
- A beacon…
“Crow teaches that adaptation is the key to survival.”
Native American Wisdom
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