The Murder of Crows
by Glenn Lange

Everybody knows that crows and ravens are among the smartest birds on the planet. Scientists have observed them fashioning tools. Aboriginal people across North America have thousands of stories about them and their ability to trick, manipulate, and often outsmart people. Edgar Allen Poe was known to quote them. Sometimes they are our friends and sometimes they are our enemies.

My father's war with crows began in Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota, near the beginning of the Great Depression. He was born in 1923 on a tenant farm out on the western edge of the state. His parents had first attempted to homestead near Dead Wood, South Dakota, and had lost everything except an old covered wagon. They loaded up all their belongings and their two oldest children and made their way back to Granite Falls, Minnesota. After a second failed attempt at homesteading and a broken leg, they found a farm they could lease on shares.

Tenant farmers in the north were called sharecroppers in the south, and these poor tenant farmers noticed little difference in their lives when the Great Depression hit. The money they didn't have dried up, but they could still raise a crop and trade it for a few supplies. However, when they planted corn, the crows came, pulling up the tender new shoots and eating the sprouted seed kernel. Then they moved to the next plant in the row, leaving the uprooted new shoots to wither in the sun. My father heard the talk at night about the crows and what they were doing to the family's prospects. He resolved to kill those crows. He would kill every one of them and save his family. At nine years old he had an old shotgun and permission to use it to hunt for food. He decided that also meant protecting food.

The only problem was that when he took the shotgun out the door the crows flew away. It seemed like they taunted him as they flew off. When he came out the door empty handed they kept pulling up the corn and eating the kernels. If he picked up a rock, they moved just out of range. He once tried carrying a broomstick out the door. The crows never budged. He tried carrying the shotgun and the broom together and the crows flew away. One night he took his shotgun out to the barn and slept there all night, and when the sun came up he was ready. The barrel of the shotgun barely stuck out the hole between two barn boards, and he was sure that nothing could see him lying in the shadows. The crows took the morning off. Finally, being nine years old, he cried and gave up.

As the years went by there were other battles with crows. Few went his way. His hatred burned deep and never, ever went away.

These days, in his mid eighties, he lives a quiet life in Spokane with the woman he married a few years after my mother died. Nelly is a good woman, and she takes good care of my father, despite his tendency to dig his heel in and do mostly what he's going to do, regardless of her good advice.

They have a bird feeder in the back yard and a few birds began nesting nearby. It wasn't long before the crows came along. It was bad enough that they ran the other birds off and devoured the birdseed in the feeder, but then they found the nests of the other birds and began raiding them for eggs and baby birds. In one of their raids they killed a baby bird and carried it to the birdbath to wash it off. The water was pink with innocent blood, and now Nelly was ready for war too.

Dad and Nelly were going to kill those crows, of course, but the murder had to be well planned. They couldn't be poisoned because other birds, and that silly squirrel, might take the bait instead. A slingshot was out of the question because neither of them could pull the rubber back far enough to hurt anything but themselves. That left guns, but guns in town are a bad idea. The primary reason was that if you shot a gun somebody would hear it and call the cops. What they needed was a quiet gun.

So, they went over to Fred Meyers and bought a pellet gun. They knew they had to be careful and they would be. They would only shoot into the air at those damned crows. The crows would be dead and nobody would know. It was the perfect crime. All they had to do now was take it to the gravel pit and practice. They took the gun out of the box at the kitchen table, checked it out to see how it worked and made sure they had the right ammo for it. Then they hopped in the car and drove to the pit where they had a great time with target practice and plotting the murder of those damned crows.

It was a disappointment to them that they never got the chance to carry out their scheme. When they got home there were no crows to be found, and they never come back. That was two years ago. They couldn't figure it out until I asked them one question. " When you went target practicing that day, where did you leave the receipt for the gun?"

The answer? "On the kitchen table, by the window."

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