I’m in the middle of one of those early morning dreams, the kind that are more vivid than middle of the night dreams, more intense, violent even. In the dream, there is an intruder in my space, a man standing in the darkness of my room, an invader who means to do something terrible. I begin to scream, a terrible, squalid noise, unlike a normal, human scream. The sound is so loud; piercing jolts of alarming volume and harsh, ragged intensity, that it actually jolts me awake. As I look around for the man in the darkness of early dawn, a feeling of horror comes over me, more terrifying even than the dream. It is dawning on me that this is how mornings were going to be from now on. This is because the sound isn’t coming from me, or from the dream. It is coming from right outside my window, from very real invaders. It is coming from the crows.
The thing is, they scream. People think it’s cool that they “communicate” with each other. The problem with this is that their “communication” is screaming. One day I realized that crows had basically taken over my surroundings. We live, overlooking a valley, on a tree covered mountain. These trees evidently make great look out spots for hanging around and being able to see what’s going on in the valley below. Normally, the hundreds of Redwoods, Bays and Madrones around our house are filled with birds. There are all sorts of birds; tiny song birds, California Blue Jays, crying hawks, cooing doves, small brown wrens, quick, pointed larks, vibrating hummingbirds, and even the occasional woodpecker, whose black body is topped with a jaunty red mow-hawk who makes a depraved laughing sound. Then there was perhaps my favorite of all, an owl, who would perch at dusk, all alone, high up in the Madrones and call out, raising his voice to sing a beautiful, melancholy romance.
On any given day, Dexter and I would come outside in the morning to hear all manor of birds singing chirping, tweeting and calling to each other, busily hopping from tree limb to tree limb, working on nest building or fussing over offspring. The industriousness and cheerfulness of these birds is admirable, and makes living up here worth the trek up the winding one lane road. It can be a challenge, with all the hikers, the dog walkers, the bike riders, the deer, and of course, the other drivers.
We had recently moved here from the small village of Mendocino. There, we had been surrounded by the quiet solace of the redwood forests, and the charismatic beauty of the pacific ocean. There was no traffic. Here, there were so many more people, so much more noise. But, mercifully, because we live on a mountain above the busy town, as you drive up, up, up the curving road, it gets cooler, shadier, quieter, and more peaceful the further up you go. And when you hear the birds, with their important business and their beautiful voices, it seems well worth it to live up here.
But then came the crows. I didn’t really notice exactly when they took over. I don’t remember if it was gradual or all at once, just that one day, the crows, hundreds of them, had taken over. Every day at dusk they would fly up to the trees around and above our house. Their favorites were the Madrones. The Madrones aren’t regular trees. They have an eerie, almost spiritual presence. Their bark gleams, copper colored in the sun. They stand, tall and silent, sacred, beautiful, savages, reaching their strong, bronzed arms up as if up to some ancient god. The Madrones are no place for crows, those sloppy, ungraceful creatures. It didn’t seem right. It seemed profane somehow. The crows would scream to one another as they settled in for the night. This process took anywhere from an hour to two or more, as they clucked and cawed, clicking and rustling their dirty black feathers together as they settled into the highest branches in the growing darkness.
Then, literally at the crack of dawn, they would begin what was arguably a worse ritual. As they awoke, they would begin shifting from foot to scaly foot, and as the sun began its rise, they would start to ‘communicate’ hideously shrieking loudly to each other, presumably about their plans for the day. And one by one, they would take off down to the valley screaming loudly as they went. This too, took a long time. On and on they would scream, their leave-taking lasting an unendurable length of time. Mind you, this started at around five in the morning and lasted for up to an hour. Eventually they would all be off, announcing their departures with grim gusto, like so many flying monkeys or jagged, broom-sticked witches on their way to do unseemly things.
Oh, how I grew to resent these dark, slatternly creatures. They possessed a vulgarity, an unearned arrogance that seemed emboldened by the size and seemingly growing number among their ranks. Every day, again and again their ominous ritual occurred; right around dusk, one by one, or in groups of two, three or more, they would return to the Madrones with a cacophony of peircing, sharp caws, settling into nests, rudely rustling about, like so many self-satisfied members of a conquering army. I hated the greasy dry sounds their feathers made as they settled in for the night, hated their clucking sounds that almost sounded smug. I hated the way their bodies shone dirtily, like an oil slick in a puddle. I hated the proud, ungraceful way they moved, strutting around like the mobsters of the bird world. They had the boorish, cocksure confidence of gangsters. They seemed to me the bullies of the bird world, and I hate a bully.
I began searching for information about crows in general, and found out some pretty disturbing intel right off the bat. Firstly, crows don’t build their own nests. Unlike the industrious nest-building birds, laying food away for harder times, building nests with twine, sticks and twigs to make homes for their children, crows simply take over the nests of others. They’ll eat or kick out the eggs that another bird laid, from a nest that another bird built, stick by stick. Even worse, they sometimes feed song bird eggs to their own crow offspring. It made me sick to think of all that hard work wiped out by these invaders.
I began to notice that there were no more song birds on our part of the mountain, a stark and rather depressing fact I realized with equal parts of doom and panic. I became conditioned to dread dusk, a time of day previously graced by warm cooing, friendly singing, and plaintive hooting. Now, instead of pretty birdsong and cheerful bustling, there was only the dark homecoming of the invader.
I went, naturally, online. “How to get rid of crows?” I typed. Predictably, the internet was full of articles about how great crows are. Evidently, when you try to find information about getting rid of crows, you will face an annoying onslaught of idiotic attempts to defend them. “They’re highly intelligent!” one would whine sentimentally. “Crows actually are songbirds!” another would declare nonsensically. I don’t know why this is, but some people seem to feel the need to take a stance, however moronic, just to be contrary. It’s irritating, yes, but a mere road bump on the “information super highway”. I persevered, trying to find some sanity and common sense. (I know, I know, on the internet.)
I eventually found the world of sites that seemed at least to understand why you would not want a huge swarm of disease-spreading, song bird baby-murdering, sleep-depriving, screaming crows to invade your home and ruin your life. However, even in the realm of content acknowledging that one might be justified in wanting to get crows off of ones property, there was an enormous amount of stupidity and hucksterism through which one must slog. Like any issue you research online, there is a wide spectrum of recommendations, products and suggestions, from the industrial sound system used by corporate farms for thousands of dollars, to the $9.99 fake owl that is supposed to make the crow think that a badly made plastic unmoving figure will do them any harm. It won’t and they know it wont. A small, still, oval blob sitting immobile way down below their majestically high and strategically impervious perches was less than useless. Bye-bye $9.99!
Such nonsense, so many expensive and dubious products, and silly advice was rampant. One product recommended was about five thousand dollars, and apparently is for airports to keep birds away from airplanes. That made sense, but obviously was out of my pay grade, and not for a residential area. Some sites recommended hanging a fake “dead” crow upside down. This was supposed to scare them into thinking “Oh my God you guys! There’s a crow murderer on the loose! What kind of sick horror show is this? Lets get the hell out of here!” Bye-bye $15.99! The “dead crow” and the fake owl were not practical ideas in my situation anyway, as the crows were so high up in the trees and so thoroughly entrenched there that they weren’t paying any attention to an object hanging from a fence down near my house, or some other place I could actually reach. Another thing about this idea was that, as everyone acknowledged, they are smart, and would quickly figure out that they were in no danger from a fake, upside down, shoddily feathered object from Michael’s Kraft store or a fake plastic owl. They basically look way down at either object and do whatever a crow does instead of shrugging.
As I kept searching though, I did learn a lot. First of all, for some reason they are Mexico’s “state bird” whatever that means, and therefore, enjoy some sort of irrational diplomatic protection, so in short, you can’t kill them. Why Mexico, a fine and noble country, would have such bad taste picking a state bird was beyond me, and I lost a lot of respect for Mexico then and there. Anyway, shooting them was out, not that I would, even if I could, ever shoot, kill, or harm any animal, and so was poison for obvious reasons. Even so, ‘muchas gracias Mexico!’
I kept learning more about crows. In addition to what I already told you about their grotesque and squalid behavior vis a vis other birds, they also spread disease. This includes the West Nile Virus, which is found in their waste, a fact whose ickiness is exacerbated by their appalling habit of relieving themselves indiscriminately, spraying feces on children’s play equipment, sandboxes, and of course, picnic tables. I also learned that a group of crows is not called a flock, but a ‘murder’, a term which refers to and has grown out of their thuggish behavior towards those they consider to be adversaries. Apparently if enough crows get together and decide (again, they ‘communicate’. Cute, right?) to go after a predator or perceived enemy, say, a lone cayote, they will surround it and, I guess, peck it to death.
This is seen by some as more proof of their cleverness, because they do it even when unprovoked. In other words, they don’t just act in self-defense, they do it preemptively, in other other words, they are just dicks. That’s why a group of them is called a murder, because they’ll just decide they don’t like the look of you and maybe they feel like killing someone. They’ll even do it to a cow. They evidently can recognize other creatures, including humans, by their facial features, and remember if you are a friend or foe. If they see you as a foe, they just might kill you. But, here’s the thing, when was the last time a cow was a threat to a crow? See? Dicks. Even though some see this behavior as highly intelligent, it made me wonder, if you’re so smart, why can’t you build your own nest? If you’re so intelligent, why have I seen you, with my own eyes, peeling a dried worm off the road and eating it?
Finally I found a few useful pieces of advice. One, if you have a crow infestation, the first thing to do is stop feeding them. Well I’m sure you know by now that even if you promised to give me a lifetime supply of Crème de la Mer to feed a crow, I wouldn’t. Ever. But what this site said made a lot of sense. Even if you don’t know it, you may be providing them with food. Do you have a birdfeeder? Do you keep dog or cat food outside? Is your garbage unsealed? The answer to all of these questions was no, but then I got to the last one. Do you have a compost heap? Adam had started one not that long ago. Well, needless to say, that ended pretty fast. Still though, they were entrenched now, compost or not. But I found another tip. There was a recording you could play called “Crow Be Gone” If you play it while they are coming home to roost, it may help disrupt their evening ritual of nesting, and start to dismantle their habit of coming to your property. Worth a shot right?
The recording plays sounds they supposedly hate, like crow predators calling out warning calls, I guess “CROWS BEWARE!” as well as sounds that are in a frequency that only the crows can hear. I guess that’s a thing? According to several unaffiliated testimonials though, it worked. It was advertised as a safe, humane way to get crows to leave your property while hopefully not bothering your neighbors or hurting the crows. I was down one fake “dead crow” and one even faker “scary owl”, but I wasn’t broken. Not yet. I ordered “Crow-Be-Gone” and waited. (bye-bye $19.95!)
When my Crow Be Gone “kit” finally arrived, I opened what appeared to be nothing but a CD with two rather evil looking sillouettes of crows on it. I rummaged around in the garage for my old “boom box” and found an out door extension chord, and set up my first serious attempt to GET RID OF CROWS! When it was almost dusk, I put the CD in the box, cranked the volume, and waited. The CD was on a loop, somehow, and would play over and over until you switched it off. Sure enough, the piercing calls of predator birds could be heard at weirdly intermittent and seemingly random times. One by one, or sometimes in pairs or three and four at a time, crows began to fly up from down in the valley to the Madrones.
At first they seemed oblivious to the CD, so busy squawking to each other and figuring out their places for the night. But gradually, and unmistakably, they started to sort of stop what they were doing and look down uncomfortably at the driveway where the boom box was. Some shifted nervously from foot to scaly foot, seemingly uncertain as to what was going on. I didn’t dare hope that this was the miracle advertised in the ad, but it was something. After a few minutes some crows seemed to become sort of agitated, and though they didn’t seem terrified they were bothered. One or two actually flew away, but only to nearby trees. Most stayed, but I figured they were seriously entrenched by this point, and probably had eggs and even chicks up there. This idea both grossed me out and made me less impatient with Crow Be Gone. I reasoned that if they had eggs and offspring up there, it made sense that they would take longer to leave, and it didn’t necessarily mean it wouldn’t eventually work. Every evening after work, I played that CD at the beginning of dusk, and gradually their numbers began to wane. I figured it was an opening salvo in a long-term effort.
What happened, and I have found that this is something that happens with crows, was that after a while, although they clearly didn’t like the noise on the CD, eventually they realized that there was really not a danger to them, because they had yet to experience any actual predators anywhere in sight, so, basically, fuck you Keiran! Despair leaked in to me from the perifory of my psyche, like ink on wet paper. But from despair came a mad kind of inspiration: Air Soft! Ares had these toy guns that he and his friends played with that shot biodegradable pellets that didn’t hurt anyone, but popped with alarming speed when shot. I started shooting near the crows as they began to roost, which, especially at first, scared the living shit out of them. The problem was, how would any passerby not think I was actually shooting crows, and also, this only worked if you stood outside for an hour at least and shot at them every time they rested on a branch. But it was a good way to disrupt their complacency. With the combination of the CD and the Air Soft pellets, I had finally begun to challenge their claim to my territory, song bird territory.
For many weeks this combination of ‘Crow Be Gone’ and Air Soft pellets was pretty effective in disrupting their roosting routine. If you had tenacity, and could last until actual nightfall, (because they would fly away and come back over and over again,) you had a chance of forcing them to sleep elsewhere that night. And, I figured, with each night that they had to find a different place to sleep, the chances increased that maybe they’d someday get out of the habit of coming at all. They were incredibly persistent though. This went on for a long time. They would show up at dusk and I would scare them away. They would leave, but then come back, leave and come back. They tried to wait me out. Unfortunately for them, they had picked the wrong adversary. But an adversary they began to recognise.
On my daily hikes up to the top of the mountain, I noticed that crows would start screaming the moment they saw me. It seemed that they really were able to determine their human adversaries by “facial recognition”. They knew who I was, a fact which was both sort of impressive and a bit frightening. Sometimes, when I was hiking back down the mountain, they would actually fly down, flocking together from tree to tree, following me, watching me. Occasionally they would even fly over me, circling me, whilst crying out to each other in midair. I can only imagine the things they were contemplating. A murder perhaps? I pictured them deciding en masse to take me down, dive bombing my head in a loud, violent, and perhaps well deserved attack. Obviously, to them, I was no different than a lone cayote in their midst. To them, I was the invader.
Every evening at dusk I held vigil. Adam said things like “you can’t change nature” and “just get some ear plugs”. Ares and Anais hated it when I would abruptly get up from dinner or whatever we were doing and go outside like a mad woman, every time I heard a crow. It probably freaked everyone in my family out to be honest. But still they came back, sometimes in groups, sometimes one at a time. I began to learn to discern between their different calls. Some sounds, like a clucking noise, seemed to pertain to nesting and offspring. Others seemed to mean “I’m, here in this tree. Where are you?” Others seemed to be some sort of scouting calls, and were made when a crow was flying really high up, maybe looking for good spots to roost. Still others were clearly danger alerts, as in; “This bitch is fucking shooting at us!”
The unprettiness of their screams was unpleasent, and their stubborness was unnerving. Their slatternliness, rudeness, and almost obsessive interest in the Madrones was upsetting. By this point, they seemed almost manic, like they all were suffering some sort of bird OCD laced with PTSD. These are country birds, who have developed the ability to communicate with each other over great distances and wide open spaces, so their volume in a residential area is particularly loud, harsh, and jarring. This means, of course, that their presence in residential areas is caused by human encroachment on their normal habitat. Where they are from, humans are the invading species. In some ways, it’s all one big turf war. The crows’ territory has been invaded by humans, and the crows, in turn, have invaded the songbirds’ turf. That’s the thing about turf wars. Everyone wants to think of themselves as a songbird. Sometimes you’re no better than a crow.
Sometimes even at this point, they will still come back, to see if I have given up I suppose. When this happens, something comes over me. Born of the trauma of being invaded and seemingly overwhelmed by them, their horrible lack of manners, their vulgarity, their sheer volume, their tenacity, there now exists in me a primal being. This being will not give up, will not cede territory. It will stay as long as it takes. It will fight with patience and cunning. This being has studied the ways of its enemy and will not back down. This is another way of saying that I have gone slightly insane. I just want a safe, peaceful place to raise my children. The songbirds want that too. The truth is, the crows just want the same thing, they just don’t know how to negotiate. Whatever, I am not about to let this dark, violent species drive me away. I have worked too hard to find a safe place for my family, and I am not going to let these birds ruin it. As much as they may have tried to chase me away, it isn’t going to happen. We have been locked in a battle of wills and I am certainly not giving up.
Eventually though, something has happened. Finally, a change seems to have taken place. Now, when I take Dexter out in the morning, we hear other birds. We see mountain blue jays, the male of the pair wearing an impressive black headdress. Over in the lavender, a couple of hummingbirds make chirping sounds when one gets too close to the other, arguing over territory. Above us there are songbirds too, busy in the the trees all around us. They hop around, rebuilding nests, fussing over babies, chirping, cooing, and singing. “Listen Dexter!” I tell him as we look up and around us at all the activity and hear the music of the birds. He looks at the blue jays, then at the hummingbirds, and then up at the trees, sniffing the air as he listens. After a minute, he looks back at me with a wise look. “Isn’t that the most beautiful sound in the world?”
The other night, I even heard the owl, all alone, calling out for a mate, a beautiful, sad song, from way high up in the Madrones.
