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Health & Fitness

The Crows Are Back!

Well, its springtime in Carroll Gardens which means the flowers are in bloom, the trees are all lush, people are out and about going to stoop sales and getting ice cream, and, yes, the crows are back! I know I wrote about those scary feathered friends a couple of years ago but this year, they are even more pesky than before because they seem to have set up house in the tree right in front of my house. The other day I was startled to see four of them, all very big and very ominous looking, perched on a single branch above my front garden. I immediately slammed my door shut. I know they’re not going to attack me but they do unnerve me. I really shouldn’t have been surprised because their incessant cawing has been waking me up and their copious droppings have turned my walkway into an obstacle course.

My son noticed a crow’s clawed feet standing right on the skylight above his head while he was in bed and that pretty much freaked him out. This is the same son who encountered a possum on our stoop when he came home one night. He appreciates wild animals as much as I do.

They say that crows are very intelligent animals and I guess it’s true. When they first started being a nuisance, we bought a couple of large, plastic owls at Home Depot to scare them off. They must have figured out that the owl in front of my house wasn’t real, especially since it’s been in the same position for the last two years. So I decided to try to outsmart those smarties by moving that owl around a little and also retrieving the other owl I had in my backyard and moving it to the front.  It worked somewhat because it was a lot quieter for a couple of days and also not as messy, if you know what I mean. However, yesterday they dropped a number of “bombs” all over the place which my husband spent a half hour hosing away. We are now going to move the owls around every single day and I'm even thinking of bringing out the Halloween scarecrow from the basement but I'm afraid these crows are on to us. 

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My neighbor, Poul, who grew up on a farm in Virginia, figured out that the reason the crows are on our block is because there’s a big cherry tree in a back yard a few houses up from ours. He must be right because I keep finding cherries and/or pits while sweeping in the front. I hope they make fast work of that tree and eat all the cherries. Then they can hopefully move onto another fruit tree in another neighborhood, far, far away.

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