ESSAY
These Amazing Stealing Crows
Winging wits of seven-year-olds
I have read that crows have the smarts of a seven-year-old child. Truth be told, I find that a little hard to swallow, but then again, this story, which was told to me, seems to corroborate their amazing intelligence.
Yes, this was told to me, but even though this story is second hand it is such an amazing tale that I feel it is worth sharing.
Once upon a time (say a few years back) there was a guy in Los Angeles — let’s call him our guy in Los Angeles — who had managed to tame a crow.
He had made friends with this crow as a fledgling who seemed not to yet have got the memo to steer clear of humans. Shelled, roasted peanuts did the trick.
One day, a year or so later, the crow, on its own initiative in order to prompt our guy in Los Angeles to cough up some more of them peanuts brought him a shiny bit of tin foil, God knows from where. The crow landed on his porch and dropped the silvery offering and looked up expectedly at our guy.
“Peanuts,” said black crow eyes.
Our guy got it and went inside to get some. Just reward for a crow job well done.
The next day, the crow showed up with another shiny thing, perhaps it was some plastic…
