Murder Turkeys of Santa Fe

“A murder of crows.” Sounds like one of those whimsical collective nouns invented in Victorian England. “An ostentation of peacocks”? “A shrewdness of apes”? Skepticism is warranted.

But “murder” I get. Corvids — crows and their raven cousins — are sinister. With their oily black plumage. And their size. (Ravens can grow to more than four pounds. That’s approaching the heft of a Li’l Butterball.)

Mostly, though, it’s their smarts. You know what I mean. Next time you see one, look into its eyes. Gleaming little beads of malign intelligence.

The local crows clearly want us gone — my wife Maggie and me. They’ve been pecking at the skylights of our house since we moved to Santa Fe. Not in a confused or tentative fashion, but purposefully. Pecking and staring down at us, insolent heads cocked. I don’t know the thickness of those plastic domes, but the birds sure are interested in finding out.

A few weeks ago Maggie was sitting on the sofa with her laptop, directly under one of the skylights. Of course, crows. A pair, this time disputing the ownership of some scrap of debris.

She watched them from below, as one watches horseplaying teenagers knowing that they could, at any moment, spontaneously coalesce into a street gang. Then one of the crows noticed her, glared at her pointedly, turned. And pooped. Pooped. But for the plastic dome it would have splatted her forehead.

On evening dog walks we used to worry about coyotes. We know better now.

In Hitchcock’s The Birds, the aviforms in a coastal California town suddenly turn homicidal. No explanation given, but one take is that it’s a parable of the consequences of ecological imbalance.

What imbalance are the local crows protesting? The one caused by our presence, of course. Which I understand. Maggie and I are the newcomers, the interlopers.

Point is, we’re a little freaked out, which equals motivation. And I think there’s a solution. A deal to be made. A win-win.

We could rent out to the birds.

It’s not impossible. Crows and ravens already use tools, work together, prank other birds and animals for fun. And sometimes reward humans who care for them by leaving trinkets — twigs, pebbles, shiny trash.

So they grasp the concept of barter. That’s just a hop, a skip and a flap away from fiat money. These crows could pay their own way.

I wonder what they’ll make of Modern Monetary Theory.

© 2020 Jeff Nation