“Ok that’s seven loaves of sourdough- Wait. I’m gonna need to see some ID.”
(Reasonable quacking sounds)
“Dang it. It’s ducks in a trench coat again. Third time today.”
No bullshit, the local crows know when I'm baking sourdough now. They smell it, I guess, and they know that I'm a soft touch. I usually do little batches of "discard" pancakes, and share a few with them.
They have, however, decided that they will only visit the side yard because of our chicken. She rules the back yard, and they won't fuck with her. So there's this solid mass of iridescent black on that patch, just cawing and waiting until I open the damn window.
I find it funny that my local family of crows will gang up on and harass the living shit out of any hawks that dare to show up in the neighborhood, but a single bluejay (like a third their size) will chase the whole family off in no time. Bluejays are some tough motherfuckers.
I love crows and I feed peanuts to my local family, but they're still extremely skeptical of me after more than a year and won't touch the peanuts until I go back into the house. I keep reading that they give gifts to humans they like but they haven't left shit for me - except one time when one of them puked up whatever he had just eaten so he had more room for the peanuts.
I also make sourdough. Maybe I should try giving them some of that.
For a few years, I had a crow friend who liked to perch in the trees across the street. I would yell hello, and they would caw back. They were great, I always have them my food scraps. Stopped coming one day, and I really miss them. I hope they just found greener pastures somewhere.
Oh yeah, crows are survivors. If they moved away, it's because something better drew them. They don't abandon a solid resource without a damn good reason.