Trash Day in the Canyons

     Today is Trash Day in the Canyons. One of my neighbors had already taken their trash out by the time I started to move mine to the ‘curbside’ for pick up. Earlier this morning my cat Rupert was sitting in his window surveying his lands and the castle grounds but was clearly upset at something that had invaded his space. It was the sound of wings, big wings, flapping in the air at high speed. There was a huge crow worrying at one of my neighbors’ trash barrels.

     Later I was taking my barrels out to the road and I noticed that the crow was now joined by a comrade and they had succeeded in liberating some of the treasures in the neighbors’ barrel. What was liberated was a bag of store-bought sugar cookies. These guys had no fear of me and I was twenty feet away from them. I was scolding them. They scolded me back. So I just started watching them. They had a system. One of the crows would stand nearby to the now ripped open bag of cookies in the middle of our road while the other crow would swoop down and grab one in its maw and fly off to enjoy his treasure. When he was done he returned to the area of the cookies, relieved his comrade and stood guard while his comrade grabbed a cookie and took off. This was repeated several times until eventually they seemed to lose active interest in the cookies but still stood by guarding their treasure.

      I would suspect by the time the cookies are gone that the birds will both be dead of diabetic shock. There has to be at least one lesson there for us to heed.