Counting Crows
Today's topic: Crows and How They Are Poised to Take Over The World
You've seen them before, surely. Crows, ravens � black winged things soaring over head or glowering from a fence post or a gnarled naked branch. Possibly pecking impertinently in your garbage or mauling some hapless furry rodent-like thing. Perhaps you even know that a collection of crows is known (most disturbingly) as a "murder".
But did you know they were taking over the world?
Well, North America anyway. I'm not sure that they're plotting anything alarming in Europe or elsewhere. But they sure are acting scary here. Or so I've read.
Three hours west of Toronto, there is a town called Chatham. And Chatham is being invaded, Hitchcock style, by hundreds of thousands of crows. According to a magazine article I read recently, the crows descend in multiple murders of 60,000 or more as night falls over the quaint Ontario town. (To be precise, I'm not sure if it's quaint or not. I've never been there. And knowing what I know now, I'd think twice about going there.)
They mass in biblical numbers, evil harbingers of death and all things spooky, lining the streets and power lines. Silent millions roosting in every tree, raining paint-peeling excrement over Chatham and her citizens. Can you imagine?!
Millions of crows, those "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous birds of yore". Ebony critters everywhere, their beady jet eyes fastened unblinkingly to your every move.
I shudder at the mere thought. And evidently, Chatham isn't the only town experiencing such raven coloured horror. The invasion is spreading. Nearby Auburn has had it's skies blackened recently too. And the crows are apparently eyeing London, Ontario too.
So what's the deal? What's with the sudden plague of black birds? Well, it's like this: they like what we've done to the world. Garbage is a big draw. And the water nearby. And the lights and nice tall trees lining the streets offer protection from the crows' noctural enemy, the owl.
Apparently, owls love to eat crow. They rip off their heads and wings and chow gleefully on their oily black torsos. Who knew?
But owls like the night, not the light, and well-lit communities like Chatham are safe-havens for crows. Plus, the crows like to roost in the trees where they can keep an eye out for owls that go swoop in the night.
The residents of Chatham have tried allsorts to rid the town of the raven scourge � releasing hawks and eagles and balloons marked with evil owl eyes � but to no avail. They may disappear for a day or two, but dusk falls again and the skies of Chatham go black with crows.
"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadows on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore!"
sometimes nature is just creepy.
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