No Duck – But Crow Dynasty!

I was about 5 years old when one day Dad asked me if I’d like to have some baby crows for pets. Well at one time or another we had a pet squirrel, a raccoon and I even had a pet baby skunk. So I told Dad “Why not?” I had no idea as to how he would acquire a pair of baby crows. He said he spotted a mama crow sitting on a nest high in a post oak tree. He told me to check on this nest every day and to let him know when I saw any movement in that nest. Sure enough after a while I spied a pair of black heads peeking out of this crow’s nest. Dad then built a square frame box out of 1x4s. This box was installed over the nest. On top of this box he nailed some chicken wire. This kept the small birds from leaving the nest, but they still could be fed by their mother crow thru the chicken wire. When these youngsters were ready to fly the coupe, Dad dumped them into a sack and brought them home. Not being able to digest heavy food like corn kernels, and such, I had to soak the food in water and hand feed them for a while. They grew up fast and were playful companions for me. I even got them to mimic certain words. I repeated some words or sounds over and over to them and like a parrot they came pretty close to repeating them. They might have been the first Czech speaking crows ever.

In reality my dad actually hated the wild crows because they robbed him of many pecans from his trees along his pecan bottom. Sometimes when he had the time - usually on a Sunday afternoon - he would take the two pet crows into the creek bottom and setting the cage on a tree stump he would use them as a decoy. The two crows would sing out a tune and before long there would be a flock of crows circling madly around the stump and tree tops. Then dad would open up on them with his double-barreled shot gun.

I began to wonder if his actual intent from the beginning was to have these pet crows for his benefit and not for me to have them as pets.