It’s nuthin to crow about... 10.10.08
I THINK I might hate crows.
I know, I know, that is a terrible thing to be saying
about some of God’s wee creatures, but they annoy me…a
lot.
Okay, so maybe hate is too strong a word but I don’t
think ‘strongly detest’ or dislike is strong enough.
Worse than me coming to realise that I might happen to
hate them though, is my annoyance at myself for letting
these creatures get on my nerves so much.
They are, after all, pretty darn stupid. Well at least
that’s we’re led to believe.
I mean come off it now, any bird that can scared away by
an old coat tied to a stick must be pretty dumb.
Yet, dumb and all as they might be, they have succeeded
over the past few weeks to start to really get on my
nerves. |
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That’s because there is a
large tree outside my house, which these crows seem to
have decided is an ideal stopping point both late in the
evening and early in the morning.
They have been using the tree for years now as some kind
of a roadside or I mean airside rest spot, (or maybe
it’s a crow-bar!) but over the past few weeks they
appear to have gotten noisier and noisier.
The scientific reason for why they gather like this is
apparently all guesswork.
Well at least when I asked ‘the google’ the best I could
get was a whole bunch of theories, but it seems that
crows have been gathering like this in roosts for, well
as long as there have been crows. (Apparently their
feathers and their fore feathers have been doing this
for years!)
Some say it is the old safety in numbers thing,
protection from predators, some meanwhile suggest that
these crows get together to share information on where
they might best get food.
I’ve been thinking that if they keep this up over the
winter it might be where they might get killed, despite
their safety in numbers thing.
Well okay that was pretty dramatic, I mean how the heck
would I kill 200 crows in the tree in one go anyway, it
was just a badly thought out idle threat.
Still, I wonder is that where they get their collective
name from…a murder of crows?
The thought of electrocution did cross my mind, but it
all seems so complicated as to how they can sit on those
wires and survive, so the best I could come up with was
a kind of home made solution.
And that was, when the noise gets to the point where I
can no longer take it any more, I open the window and
try to scare them away.
I no longer shout at them though.
That method stopped promptly after the time I stood at
the front door roaring ‘go on, get away from here,’
which prompted no reaction from the stupid crows but saw
one terrified girl out for an early morning walk,
scuttle past my gate in terror.
Now I clap. I know it’s pathetic, but it works. Well
kinda.
I just open the window or the door and I clap as loud as
I can and the panic starts and they kinda half-think
about staying but another clap comes and they go. I told
you they were dumb. |
Well they were dumb, but
this past week they seem to have decided that it’s just
an oul scare tactic and more and more of them have been
sitting tight in the tree.
It got to the point where I no longer just opened the
window, but actually went out to the garden to try to
scare them away, but they seem to go when they are good
and ready and not when I want them to.
Runnin’ out of ideas I wondered if there was any way I
could get these crows evicted from my tree, but
apparently not.
Seems as if they have a ‘caws’ in a contract that says
otherwise… |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
|
