Morning Folks June 13, 2009

I was telling my friend Melinda the other day that I can't seem to write about "nothing" like I used to. I mean there are blogs I did about lemons, for gosh sakes, you'd think I could come up with something. But, Ed encouraged me to do one today and so to combat the gloom of 3 weeks of rain on Cape Cod I decided it was time.

So, the subject today is Crows.

Ed's mother was a Crowell and I have been doing a lot of research lately on his line. This name probably originated as Crow. And maybe that has something to do with where my mind is, but I am not going to write about his family. Rather, the blasted murder of crows that seem to have moved into the trailer park just to wake me in the morning with their ear-piercing taunting caws and bullying behavior toward the smaller more welcome birds at the feeder. Of course the squirrels are not scared off, although I wish they were, but that is definitely an entirely different blog.

These crows are like a street gang of huge black nastys. Like thugs on the corner lying in wait for the old ladies who got their checks and are heading for the market, they wait to inflict harm on the inhabitants of Bass River Trailer Park.

Most of us know the term for a group of crows is a Murder of crows. Now if that doesn't sound menacing, I don't know what does. Here in the trailer park, there are probably 10 to 12 of them who appear each morning.

It starts with one high in a pine tree in the yard next door. He, or she (its impossible to tell) calls the others and one by one they appear.




Like a scene from Hitchcock's horror movie, they begin to move closer and descend on the trees around the trailer. Then above me I hear one land. On the roof.

The sound is unlike the squirrels who sometimes scurry around after dropping an acorn with a loud bang. No, these things are much more substantial and you can tell by the landing thud that there is some heft up there. But when they walk, being bipedal, the sound is more like a human being walking on the floor in the apartment above you. But there is no apartment above me. And in the morning when I am not quite awake, and something is walking on the roof, it makes me think of something from a Twilight Zone episode. Small bird-humans pacing back and forth and just waiting for the right moment to start tearing pieces of the roof off and coming through a hole they've made in the ceiling. Okay, so that might be a little far fetched, but it is rather unnerving and certainly annoying.
Do you hear something up there?







At first, I wasn't sure if they were ravens or crows. So, naturally, I Googled them. They are American crows. You can tell because their beaks aren't curved and their tails are more fans than pointy. But, both ravens and crows are from the same family. Corvids. And a raven is a crow but all crows are not ravens. I am happy to learn they aren't ravens, who have been known to kill and eat weak lambs! Although these do look large enough to attack a little lamb, I don't think they would go after a lamb unless it was already a chop.

Acoording to Wikepedia: "Mated pairs form large families of up to 15 individuals from several breeding seasons that remain together for many years.[12] Offspring from a previous nesting season will usually remain with the family to assist in rearing new nestlings...There are estimated to be 31,000,000 crows in the US."
I don't know how to get rid of them.



And watching these things, who incidently do disappear after terrorizing me each morning, I see nothing funny about them and wonder what twisted mind ever came up with Heckle and Jeckle. Do you remember that cartoon? And is there any of you who thought they were actually funny? I did find out that they were supposed to be magpies, but they too are corvids so I am going to consider them crows.


Man I hated those two. And the only reason I watched them was because they were on with Mighty Mouse. By the way, my sister Cindy had a crush on Mighty Mouse. She wanted to marry him. Now that was weird.







And what about the crows from Mad Magazine? Those horrible spies that gave me the creeps as a kid. I really didn't like Mad magazine.

I only read it because my brother Chuck got it during the summers down here at Caroline's, the store down by the beach, and I liked to do that thing with the back page where you folded it in a certain way to make a picture of one thing turn into something else, like Alfred E Newman or someone.





I never really got that "What Me Worry" thing, either.

All I know is that if I had a BB gun, and I don't believe in guns, I would use it on these loud- mouth nasty things.

And once I did, I would be bothered by them never more.

Have a great day! I think the sun's out! YAY!

Love,

Suz