Caw

If you are like me, there’s nothing you enjoy more then waking up every morning to the calm, soothing sound of about 700 screeching crows, but recently they have become an annoyance. Occasionally, instead of waking up at 8:00 every morning, I would like to sleep in to maybe, oh, about 4-5 PM, but the crows seem intent on preventing that. Back in the fall when the crows first arrived, it was kind of cool to see whole trees covered with them. But now, “Cool, look at all the crows!” has turned into “Oh damnit, they’re BACK!” Back in the middle of November, I was already ready for the crows to move on and was expecting one of the following to happen as winter approached:

A: It would get cold, and the crows would all leave

B: It would get cold, and the crows would all die.

Any one or combination of the options above would have been fine. Instead, the crows chose option C: Hang around through the winter and annoy the hell out of everybody. For some reason they chose the trees around Myers Hall as their official squatting grounds.

I’m not sure if people in other dorms get to experience the joy of this, but every morning starting at around 6:00, the crows start singing (and I am using “singing” in the sense of “hellish screeching”). What are they talking about? There can’t be that much information for crows to talk about for hours on end; crows are only about as intelligent as the average hamster or State Representative. My guess is that they just tell each other, “It’s cold!” over and over, occasionally agreeing with another crow (“yeah, it IS cold!”). It’s not just a constant noise either; after a while the cawing starts to die down, and just when you are about to fall back asleep, about half of the crows have an amazing epiphany and realize that – get this – it’s cold! Then the feel the unquenchable urge to loudly explain this amazing fact to all the other crows around them, and the loud/quiet cycle begins anew. Closing the window helps, but in Myers, you have two options: You can either have the window cracked and have a comfortable room filled with the loud noise of crows, or you can shut the window and have a uncomfortably hot room with only the muffled sound of crows.

One time my friend, (who for the sake of protecting his privacy, will only refer to as “Cory Shoemaker, room 101 Myers hall”) got so fed up with the crows he grabbed his trombone (everybody has a trombone, right?) went outside, and started blaring it back at the crows. I have actual video footage of this, but I have not shown it to anyone yet for several reasons. One reason is that the entire video is pretty much just a black screen, because it was about 1:00 in the morning, and all you can hear are the crows, a few trombone blasts and the occasional, “DIE you damn crows!” and then maniacal laughter. Another reason was I was afraid that our mental health would be put into question. I have to admit, the trombone worked pretty well and the crows abandoned their trees for about two minutes, but eventually they all came back. That actually wouldn’t be a bad job; walking around campus, scaring crows out of the trees with a trombone in an attempt to get them to stay away for good. The only downsides would be getting pooped on by hundreds of birds, and of course looking like a complete lunatic striding around campus blasting a trombone.

Speaking of poop, you may have noticed that the sidewalks between Myers, Hollenbeck, and the Science Center looks kind of like some crazed, abstract-expressionist artist’s painting. This is because crows, just like other animals and some people living in the Deep South, do not care in the least where they poop. I thought geese at golf courses were bad, but they have nothing on these birds. If some sort of sellable product could be made from bird poop, tuition at Wittenberg could be cut in half. Then and only then will I put up with these crows. Until that happens, I’m going to carry a trombone.

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Tags: Anti-bird Trombone Warfare, bird poop, birds, Crow, crow problem, Crows, flock, Funny, Humor, University, Wittenberg

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