The Raven's Lightning Quick Solution

This morning I shoveled a few feet of snow off the deck just outside my back door.  The crows usually stop by when there might be something to eat, but today they were roosting up in the trees.

I broke some uncured hot dogs into odd-sized pieces.  I dropped them on the cleared part of the deck, and to my surprise a big raven landed there.  He picked up a piece of hot dog in his beak,  then added to it,  picking up the biggest chunk of the lot.  He wanted to pick up one more,  but now his beak was stuffed full - it couldn't shut all the way.  So he dropped the biggest piece and replaced it with a smaller one.  He now carefully closed the hooked tip of his beak on the biggest chunk,  and he was up and away!



The math:

1+1.5= 2.5

2.5-1.5=1   

1+1=2

2+1.5= 3.5 !

Spiders

Spiders seem perceptive and intelligent.  When I speak to them, they stop whatever they are doing and appear to be paying attention to me. Last night one had a leg drawn up at the "knee" ready to take a step, and stood stock still while I asked him to go somewhere else nice and quiet because he was so big and brown and I didn't want him on my table amongst my papers.   I'm not so far gone as to think they understand words, but they do seem to catch the gist of what's going on. He got himself onto the floor and busily legged it under the dishwasher, very good choice since it is not working, nor will it ever.

Scolel Te Forests, Mexico

Scolel Te Forests, Mexico

Crow Daycare Center

My backyard is a daycare center for the three crows that were hatched this spring. They sit quietly fidgeting in the walnut tree and come down when there's something to eat.

This morning I was sitting on the deck and noticed Marcello the cat lying right next to my chair. I reached down and began to scratch him up. Immediately I heard a racket in the tree, looked and saw the little crows on their branch, flapping and cawing at me. (Don't touch the cat! Don't touch the cat!)

I don't know why they were so bothered- Either they were sending me Mom's "Danger of bodily Injury" alarm, or they were telling me to quit fooling around and bring them a couple of peanuts or chicken or something.

Crow Games: Train Blast

I was sitting in my car at the station waiting for my friend's train to arrive. After sitting there a while I heard a train in the distance. A couple of crows sailed down and settled on an old cracked concrete foundation about five feet square, located about eight feet from the tracks. Then more and more crows arrived in an obvious state of excitement, jockeying and switching positions on the concrete. As I sat there I wondered what they were up to, and why all the fuss. At that moment a train screamed through at top speed without stopping, creating a gale-force wall of air blasting them up and away, flapping and tumbling helplessly.

I enjoyed that, but not half as much as the crows did, I bet.

Crows Teaching Young

The crows are teaching the young ones to find food for themselves, This has been going on for two weeks. The parent will pick up a largeish piece of food from the grass. The young one will then make starving sounds and hound the adult, running alongside and reaching for the food. The grown one will not let the young reach the food. After 15 seconds or so, the parent will drop the food in the grass and pound at it with his beak. Then he will pick up one of the larger pieces he has broken off and keep up the appearance of hunting in the immediate area for more pieces. At first the young one will keep up the begging, but at some point he will look down, and almost surely, after a few glances, he will see the broken pieces of food and pick one up, ending the lesson for the day.

Great Rat

A white rat lived with us for a while. Our lease was up and our dog had died, so we decided to leave Lexington. We stopped in to look in at a pet shop on our way out of town, and I bought a baby rat. We spent that summer traveling in the van. When we stopped at motels we would sneak him in and out wrapped in a shirt or towel.

When fall came we rented a house on Long Island. One day I saw Ratty closing a door by running back and forth and leaning against it. I told him I thought it was a good way to close a door, and he stopped and fixed his eye on me. His mind was fast. So he looked at me for a second and made some fast calculations and then he walked slowly along the door without taking his eye off of me, to let me know that he understood what I had said. I'm slow, but I knew what he was doing, so I waited a few minutes and then I asked him to close the door again, and he ran right over and did it.

When he was a baby we would tell him not to bite people. That was the extent of his formal training, and he learned it well. If we would try to thwart him when he was doing something particularly interesting to him, his only and very effective defense was to squeak loudly and hop in place. One evening Will was sprawled on a couch on the front porch with a beer and a magazine, and Ratty and I were in the kitchen at the back of the house. Will yelled out something or other to me. I can't remember what it was, but I didn't like it. The only answer I could think of that wouldn't lead to an argument was "Ratty, go bite Will." Damned if that little thing didn't run along the baseboards and jump down the step onto the porch and draw blood on his big toe. Will didn't appreciate it.

The house had a heat register that was an iron grate flush with the floor. I was afraid he would fall into it, so I would pick him up when he went near it, and tell him to stay away from it. I guess he thought that was great, because every time I'd say "Stay away from there", no matter where he was, He'd run up to the edge of the register and look down into it.

He died when he was about two years old. I had a dream a few months after that. In this dream my ex-father-in-law, a doctor, was watching, amazed, as Ratty did some stuff to show him what he knew. The doctor used his best deep voice to call his wife: "Millie, Millie, come here and see what this rat can do." Ratty froze, looked him in the eye, and said "Of course I can, I'm a scientific rat."

He was as sharp as a tack.