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Crow Dog
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"FOUR YEARS AGO, IN 1995, I FOUND AN ORPHANED CROW. I took him home and we became very close friends, especially during the two weeks he was learning to fly. Once he took to the air, he was on his own, and has been independent ever since.
I named him Crow Dog, after a Native American medicine man I was reading about. I still don’t know if Crow Dog is male or female, but it really doesn’t matter. He is extremely intelligent and playful. Sometimes he sits on my shoulder and bows his head and makes a cooing sound. Sometimes, he sits in a tree and yells Caw! Caw! Caw! That’s my name in "crow talk."
Crow Dog is full of mischief. He may tug at my dogs’ tails or pick the ice cubes out of my glass of iced tea. Sometimes when I’m working in the garden pulling weeds, Crow Dog will hop along and help pull weeds, too. I’ve seen him pull and pull on a large weed without success. Then he digs around the roots to loosen the soil and easily pulls the weed.* Sometimes he picks bugs off the plants or catches grasshoppers. He catches mice and moles and other pests.
Occasionally, I’ll give Crow Dog an Oreo cookie. He opens it, eats the white middle first, then he eats the cookie part.
| -- Roger Branson, Arborist Eureka, Missouri |
Suggested Reading:
Browne, Malcom W. "Second Greatest Toolmaker? A Title Crows Can Crow About – In New Caledonia, the birds fashion hooks and probes in standard forms. (Crows’ tools are called more advanced than early human’s.)." New York Times. January 30, 1996. Section B, pp.5,8.
Savage, Candace. Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995. (ISBN 0-87156-379-7)