- That every time I forget something (where I left my keys, a long-unused algebraic formula), somewhere a crow learns something new
- That whenever a crow dies, it is transfigured into a small ring with a red stone instead of leaving behind a body
- That touching a crow induces menstruation
- That most crows know my given name and are actively hostile towards me
- That crows have tiny iron shoes and wear them whenever I’m not looking
- That many of them turn into eyeless black dogs, also when I’m not looking, only it’s when I’m just sort of sideways looking at them, you know? That’s when they’re dogs, but they turn right back into crows as soon as I can see them again
- That most other birds are creeped out by crows too, and only magpies and jackdaws will willingly sit on the same branch as one
- That it is impossible to count crows, and that anyone who attempts to do so will always lose his place at the number thirteen, and have to start over
- That there is a crow hiding underneath my car 100% of the time, but whenever I bend over to look for it, he hooks his little claws into the undercarriage and flattens himself against the bed of the car so I can’t quite see him
- That crows don’t sleep in trees at all, but sink down into underground dens and sort of melt together into a giant jumble of thick chitinous beaks and claws and glossy black feathers and a thousand glittering eyes and one massive brain that commands the whole body
- That whenever a child goes missing, they’re responsible
- That crows have some sort of secret agreement with cats, and I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it, and they don’t like each other either
- That a crow can shape-shift into whatever other kind of bird it wants to look like, except for it has to always keep a single black feather, and that’s how you can tell it’s a crow-simulacrum
- That crows can smile and speak English and are always doing it when I can’t see or hear them
- That there’s a crow hiding in the last slot of every vending machine row right now, just hunched over and quietly waiting for you
Tags: animals, crows, things i believe for no reason
The one thing I know about crows is that they are terrifyingly smart and will probably take over from us one day, in an orgy of screeching and claws and blood, and all human civilisation will be hidden under bird shit, and we will slave for the crows.
I fucking LOVE crows. I will be a happy slave.
Crows are great. The gothest of birds.
fuck they’ve worked out the keyboards
GET OUT OF HERE ALL OF YOU
So I shouldn’t be trying to actively encourage crows to hang out at my house? Because that is my current plan.
I for one welcome our new corvid overlords.
I welcome our crow overlords.
Great minds!
Crow-verlords, surely.
They are smart, wicked, and perfectly assured of their place at the center of the universe. Basically my role models.
Crows are already the dominant species. All of human existence is to benefit crows.
“That crows don’t sleep in trees at all, but sink down into underground dens and sort of melt together into a giant jumble of thick chitinous beaks and claws and glossy black feathers and a thousand glittering eyes and one massive brain that commands the whole body”
Crows are kind of like caterpillars in that way, in that they form their chrysalis and then dissolve entirely before emerging transformed, except for crows, the mantle of the earth is their chrysalis and their transformation is not one we can discern. We are not yet ready to discern it.
Rat king, crow empress.
The earth’s “core” is a misnomer, dating back to the early days of science. These days professional documents will more correctly refer to it as the earth’s “yolk”
They DO know your name. Or at least your face. I’m not sure how they feel about you personally, but I’ve heard you can appease them by offerings of raw eggs and submissive body language.
I legitimately love crows. They go sledding down rooftops on bottlecaps for fun and smoke cigarettes and drink beer.
Truly the teenage dirtbags of the animal kingdom
The greatest little dinosaurs!
The Fellow has a thing for crows, and every so often finds an article of new crow research that basically confirms everything in this piece. He, for one, welcomes our new crow overlords.
I emailed this to him before having finished reading it.
Same.
We have a crow issue around my house, wherein they all live in the massive old trees (good!) that surround us, and continually wake us up at 530 each morning (bad!) and have done all summer.
One time Mr Robinn was trying to nap in the afternoon and the crows started crowing and he woke up and emailed me: “Every time I try to sleep, a crow knows.”
there’s a crow hiding in the last slot of every vending machine row right now, just hunched over and quietly waiting for you
D:
And I thought watching The Birds was bad enough. WHY.
I feel like this also applies to grackles.
Grackles are pretty much the Walmart version of crows.
Yes! They are more derpy and less ominous than crows. My cat murder grackles all the time, but does she dare interfere with the going-on of any crow? Never.
grackles! I used to live in Oklahoma and there were grackles all over the place. I like those guys, they’re funny. We don’t have them here in western Canada and I miss them and that screechy sound they make.
well, grackles, you know, they will walk right into your tent with a cheery greeting and start to inspect your camping gear with a light-hearted glee, without any regard to the human sitting right there. When you protest that you do not want grackles to have your headlamp (besides, it’s obviously too heavy for a grackle to carry without struggling) they will make disappointed noises and march back out of the tent and spend the rest of the week finding grackle things to do near the tent, hopeful that you will relent and offer them the headlamp.
I’ve camped in this spot every June for many years, and even now the grackles will sometimes invite themselves inside the tent on the first day (the same grackles? their children and great-grandchildren?), but never again have they tried to take anything. They just stroll in, hi neighbor!, and stroll out again. There are always three though. Never more and never less.
I tend to menstruate after a victory, such as leg pressing 200 lbs. I see no reason why befriending and petting a crow would not count as a menstruation worthy victory.
Almost all of these things are true, EXCEPT!
It is…possible to count crows past thirteen.
What sorcery is this?
The kind that is perilous, and for which you must make certain sacrifices, and that is the only method of true augury.
It appears so at first, but on closer examination you will find that the thirteenth crow was the first all over again.
Not accurate! You can tell the difference because…well, look it’s complicated, but crows aren’t actually black, black, they’re represented by the thirteen invisible colours of the sidereal spectrum which…ah, okay, so, look that doesn’t matter except to say that there’s a fourteenth colour, and if you know how to look for it you can see the one additional crow that always accompanies any group of thirteen crows.
This crow does…certain things.
Well, look, you’re better off not seeing it anyway, but trust me, it’s there.
but would you dare call it safe?
oh fuck no, not safe. Never safe.
I saw an autumn Pottery Barn catalog once, and one page was selling “Faux Crows.” They will have their revenge for this indignity.
Isn’t it much more likely that those Faux Crows are, in fact, real crows who are just sitting very still in a cunning bid to enter your home?
Maybe all of Pottery Barn is a vast crow conspiracy and their head office is just crows inside people-suits.
Now I’m wondering what percentage of the population is just crows inside people-suits.
HOW DEEP DOES THIS MAD BLACK-WING CONSPIRACY GO????
I am entirely a human being, and if I was any bird I would not be 13 crows inside a skin suit, but I would be 6 owls inside a human skin.
I would DEFINITELY not be a crow inside an owl skin inside a human skin.
Crows are metal as shit. What other species is grouped as a MURDER?
Yeah, even a group of ravens is only an “unkindness”. That’s, like, several degrees below murder.
Hey, sometimes it’s a conspiracy, which is pretty cool.
A crow hiding inside a Mallory-skin typed this article all hunched over the keyboard with his little skritchety crow-claws. JUST TO KEEP US OFF BALANCE.
All I want out of life is to befriend a crow, or possibly a whole murder of crows.
I also believe that whenever I hear crows cawing near me, they are talking about me, but I think that’s just me being egocentric.
Well then, you should probably consult this little girl if you want to befriend some crows. She seems to be the expert at the moment.
Yes, that little girl is my latest idol.
But how do you feel about ravens?
Crows have a power over shadows and can reshape them at will. We do not know a purpose; so far they have only been observed manipulating shadows in vaguely unsettling ways but we do not know the full use or intent.
Crows secretly love it whenever you say “Crooooooow!” like the MST3K intro.
That explains why a murder always gathers outside my window when I put on an old episode.
There’s a Georgian folk song about finding a bird’s tiny iron shoe and taking it to a goldsmith, where it magically yields enough metal to make a spade, a hoe, an axe and a knife. (Here is a recording.)
So, that one’s attested!
Thanks for that link. Georgian choral music needs mo’ love.
Ah gorgeous! I lived in Georgia for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer and I have…mixed feelings about the culture in general. But the folk singing was an unmitigated highlight. I don’t think I ever went to a dinner party at which an amazing harmonized version of Suliko wasn’t sung.
That is GORGEOUS!
The bird comes back to find it only has one shoe left.
… god *damnit* sez the bird.
http://grooveshark.com/s/Black+Crow+King/3leqw4?s…
i 100% believe that crows have the ability to coalesce into a horrible feathery crow-human shape with beaks for hands. Also that they are a slightly darker black than anything else in nature, up to and including black holes
“That it is impossible to count crows, and that anyone who attempts to do so will always lose his place at the number thirteen, and have to start over”
I feel like this explains a lot about Adam Duritz (especially his hair)
A million years ago, in the late 1980’s, I attended college in a really, really rural part of Kansas (Moundbuilders, unite!). There was a crow who lived in the pine thicket between the dining hall and the honors dorms who took a serious dislike to a friend of mine. For no reason that we could discern, the crow would wait for him, divebomb him, and shout abuse.
Just a couple of years ago, in Seattle, my parents joined a church. One of their fellow members was an elderly Englishwoman who wore sparkly hats and leggings (and could get away with them), long grey hair with bangs, and boots with multiple buckles. She fed the crows outside the church every Sunday. They gathered in their usual spot when the church had a memorial service after her death. My mom has taken over crow-feeding duties.
To me, the only bird more worthy of awe and respect is the raven.
I lived in the U district in Seattle for a while, and there was a crow that monitored a whole intersection and would chase you down the street pecking your head if you crossed its path.
I work for UW, what intersection was this? I may try to track it down 🙂
20th Ave NE & NE Ravenna Blvd! In my memory it dive-bombed from the traffic light but I might be embellishing.
This makes me wonder if HOA enforcers are not just collections of crows in a human suit.
When I was five or six a crow landed on my shoulder while I was at my grandmother’s. It was like being a Disney princess…or…I guess, more like Maleficent.* I screamed my small girl child head off and ran back to the house because MYSTERIOUS CLAWS ALL OVER MY TINY SHOULDER HALP. Surely it only wanted to be my friend. That or #11 is real.
*Ignoring how Diablo was a raven.
I was once attacked by a crow that had an injured wing because I walked too close to it. It was my fault. The crow was distressed. I was a small child and I remember the claws in my hair and wings beating around my face.
Crows definitely have a secret agreement with cats – at least black cats (also a fact: all cats turn black after their humans go to sleep on the new moon). I think it’s that they won’t mess with each other unless it’s in the furtherance of child disappearance. They probably have a creepy rhyme about it. Something like “I’ll mind me/ And you’ll mind you/ But spy an unwatched cradle/ And what mischief we shall do.”
I think no one has told my black cat this. Despite being an indoor cat, he still managed to catch a crow once. I grabbed him before he did more than terrify the poor thing, but I imagine he’s in their black books now.
Your cat is a badass for real. Crows are not small birds. Is he part jaguar or something? Also, though, you probably should have let him kill it so it couldn’t report on him to the rest of the murder.
No, he’s a giant fluffy wuss who is afraid of children, the doorbell, and the wind. Maybe I have found the reason for his obsession with trying to hang out with the local deer and moose: he knows he needs strong allies now that he’s breached the cat-crow truce.
It’s not like all crows like other crows. You know the single mass of sleeping crowflesh? Imagine if you could put the bits of yourself you don’t like in a single body and then have a cat eat it. Easy, right?
Crows are the best. Clever, wise, sarcastic little creatures. I love ’em!
I am glad that someone else shares my advanced knowledge about Crows. (https://www.facebook.com/james.mcteague/posts/10204955855157788?pnref=story)
Crows: We Want to Be Your Only Bird
I’m glad someone else remembered that!
Specifically what the crow learns is the location of your keys and memories, for the same reason the pickpocket knows where your wallet is.
They can make their tongues the shape of your keys, but the tongue isn’t shiny, you know? And no-one likes to lick the inside of a lock.
They can also make their tongues the shape of your memories, if that seems useful. Much easier to make your memories the shape of your memories tho.
!!!!!!
Remember, there’s a crow that can say “Hi!” that lives in Portland? I blurted that out when I met you on your tour. It’s true! In the Audobon Soceity park they have out there.
“giant jumble of thick chitinous beaks and claws and glossy black feathers and a thousand glittering eyes and one massive brain that commands the whole body”
Isn’t that the (absolutely horrifying) cover to A Wind in the Door?
I think my love for crows first started with the Stand miniseries produced in the mid 90s. As a weird child, I would regularly watch the miniseries during Christmas break. In fact, I did this when I went back to my parents’ house for Christmas and it was as good as I remembered.
Randall Flagg may have been evil, but I have never seen a villain (who could turn into a crow) played so well as Jamey Sheridan played him. I didn’t want him to win, but I didn’t want him to not win, you know what I mean? He was just so perfectly chilling and weirdly hilarious. Years later when I read the book, I made some slight recasts here and there in my head, but Sheridan was un-fucking-touchable. He is Randall Flagg, the Walking Dude.
I worked in a bird rehabilitation facility many years ago, and they had a crow that had been fed by the same staff person for years. The result: a crow that would sneak up behind you and say, in an uncannily accurate female human voice, “Hello, Crow.”
Possibly, badatnames, you are a crow and unaware of the fact? Did you forget? Did you accidentally transform the single black feather that stored your memory of being a crow?
This never occurred to me before but now I am totally convinced.
Is this how the YA novel that is your begins?
One of my friends is from a Crow clan, and his house is full of crow art and creepily-realistic iron crows. I am most definitely going to send him this.
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. And remember that if you shoot a crow, its family and friends will mark you, and they will come to our house late at night and burn it down.”
A good queston to never ask, I am serious about this is why there are no native crow species in South America. The less you know about the Warlocks of Chiloé, the better.
Did you know they can debaptize? They’re powerful enough to restore original sin to a child that has been reborn in Christ.
Yeah, I went to them after the emergency baptism I suffered in college, and the Pope refused my requests for excommunication.
That crows don’t sleep in trees at all, but sink down into underground dens and sort of melt together into a giant jumble of thick chitinous beaks and claws and glossy black feathers and a thousand glittering eyes and one massive brain that commands the whole body
Now they aren’t the only thing that doesn’t sleep. Thanks, Mallory.
All I know of crows is that they aren’t afraid to fight raptors, so my parents distribute dog food on the driveway of their farm (yes, dog food = crow food) to entice them to hang around and keep the hawks from killing their chickens.
I am convinced that it’s possible to train crows to protect gardens from other birds and small mammals.
Crows are my spirit animals. No really though. I guess. According to a shaman lady 20 years ago anyway. Consequently, I collect crow information. It’s kind of a fun game.
I will now collect this crow lore and place it alongside my other crow lore, and then look deep inside myself for evidence of it’s truth. After I turn into an eyeless black dog for good fun.
Good save. You read that Mallory article about spirit animals, you read this one about crows, you realize the combination is not going to go well for you.
The neighborhood crows never come and hang out in my yard. I blame the abundance of sunlight.
Have you tried peanuts? Peanuts are the natural antidote to sunlight. No salt, of course.
I have some leftover kibble from when I was taking the office dogs home on the weekends. Perhaps I’ll scatter that in the backyard and see what happens.
Although crows would probably disturb the several species of small, seed-eating birds that normally inhabit the yard, so maybe I should just accept the ecosystem I have.
That a crow can shape-shift into whatever other kind of bird it wants to look like, except for it has to always keep a single black feather, and that’s how you can tell it’s a crow-simulacrum
Yessssssss I totally agree with this one. Amongst other species of birds, it is known that having crow-blood in your ancestry may grant you access to a portion of their magic – but these half beeds must be careful when using this power, as the Crows _will_ know.
See also, the deep crow: http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2008/03/21
Best thing about crows: they eat my eggs, enabling me to spend another luxurious summer not regurgitating crawdads and mayfly larvae into needy demanding beaks. How’s a girl supposed to perfect her reed-imitating with five demanding little mouths?
Crows are my heroes! http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026
Absolutely true facts about crows in Australia (technically, Australian Ravens): they do not caw, but emit a long, penetratingly nasal wail, which sounds like they are either addressing one another as “Mark”, screaming obscenities (“FAAAAAAAHK”) or both; when they are warming up to do this, or cooling down from it, they make a horrifying gurgle; they are not black but rather an extremely dark shade of purple, which is only apparent when they are standing in direct sunlight.
Crows hang out near my bus stop so I get to see the same ones day after day. Last summer I saw them doing something that, if I’m right about what it is they’re doing, blows my mind. They swoop down to the beach and come back to the road with a mollusk. Then they fly up to one of the power/telephone lines that runs across the street and drop the food to break the shell. That’s pretty standard crow stuff, but the freaky thing is that before they fly to a wire, they bob their heads up and down a few times while holding the shell. I think they’re figuring out whether they need to go to the highest wire or not. If they pick the low wire and the shell doesn’t break when they drop it, they get sort of . . . embarrassed. Like the other crows look at the guy who couldn’t judge his mollusk correctly and pass judgement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fAGzY9rnaA re: the cat one.
Well, I feel a bit weird about the whole thing, now that I know my engagement ring is a dead crow.
Most of the items on this list are also true about ponies -especially Shetlands and miniatures.
Crows and wolves are friends! This is easily my favorite thing, ever, at all. http://wolfandravens.blogspot.com/
The only bird more terrifying than a crow is a magpie
The crows at one of the soccer fields in town when I was a kid had learned that youth soccer players often were accompanied by lunch leftovers and had figured out how to open zippers. They would open up your bags and go through them looking for leftover food during practice.
I'm glad someone else remembered that!
corvids are bestbirrrds. there’s a species of magpie that can recognize itself in a goddamn mirror. no non-primate has ever been observed to. study’s super cool reading, if you google it. but get this: only -some- members of that species can self-recognize by the red dot test. the rest react like the mirror is another bird. so, like…you think maybe there are some kinds of cognition half the population is capable of that the other half just neurologically is not? you may make your own Republican jokes, I was never here
Ravens, on the other hand, eat stairs, put spoons under the lino, and search for diamonds in the coal skuttle.
In Vancouver, where I live, we have commuter-crows. They live in Burnaby and fly in every morning; in the evening, HUNDREDS of crows will fly overhead, making their way back home to the suburbs to put themselves to bed. My house used to be under their flight-path. We called it ‘crow o’clock’.
oh fuck no, not safe. Never safe.
But technically the animal in that photo is a raven. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/page.aspx?pid=2501
Well they’ve already selected their queen so I don’t know what chance any of us stand now…
http://metro.co.uk/2015/02/22/a-little-girl-has-b…
There are no crows in New Zealand. but as an ex pat American (from upstate New York) I know all you say to be true. We do have the kokako (Callaeas cinerea). In the past this bird was called the New Zealand crow: it is not a crow at all, but it looks like one from a distance. but it is not creepy like a real crow. I found a dead body on the beach once, lying on its side, the eyes had congealed in one corner, a crow was slowly and methodically pecking at it.
That thing about a crow turning into a ring….stirred a very old memory in me. It’s from a movie…….was it We’re Back? I feel like it was We’re Back, where a creepy crow turned into a ring, and maybe the crow was an enchanter or something? My memory of that movie is really hazy, so maybe it was from a different movie…can someone help me out here? I couldn’t find it one Google; all the results coming up were irrelevant. :-/
Professor Screweyes, if I recall correctly? He had a mesmeric control/hate relationship with a murder of crows in his Circus of Fear, as a crow had taken his eye. He replaced his stolen eyeball with a screw, for reasons that were never adequately explained.
At the climax of the movie, the crows turn on him in a swirling frenzy, leaving naught of his corpse but some tattered rags and a shiny, eyeball-sized screw.
You might also be conflating the Mogget from Garth Nix's 'Sabriel,' whose geas DOES turn into a silver-and-red ring (long, strange, undead-filled story). And if we're talking about creepy animated birds, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH has an insane corvid and a truly unsettling owl that almost certainly feeds on children's nightmares.
It is absolutely true that crows can utter human language and therefore you should be careful what you say around them if you don’t want it repeated