Not long ago, I mentioned that the crows in the yard bartered me for a small rock painted to look like a strawberry. Now, the whole reason I had a rock painted to look like a strawberry was to keep birds from eating my actual strawberries. The idea behind it is that you put out strawberry decoys before the plants set fruit, and the birds will investigate them, decide they’re inedible, and assume that the rest of your strawberries are similar levels of bullshit. Seems legit, right?
These rocks aren’t the only things the crows have been interested in. When my spouse’s mom came for a visit, she remarked that she’d seen the crows playing with some of those little black plastic pots you get from plant nurseries. (I have a few on a shelf on my deck. They’re useful for starting plants, and I’d rather re-use them as much as possible and keep them out of the landfill.) I thought this was funny, but didn’t really put much more thought into it. I had a thing, the crows thought this thing was amusing and interesting, and that was that.
Then I noticed that I had lost all of the strawberry rocks in the back yard and one of the raised beds in the front. Just up and vanished.
Then my spouse mentioned seeing a crow flying away with an empty plant pot in its beak. He’d tried to snap a picture, but only managed to get a blur of tail feathers as the thief absconded.
Putting two and two together, I can only assume one thing: They’re developing agriculture.
Maybe it isn’t aliens or artificial intelligence that we need to worry about. Maybe humanity’ll be overthrown by a race of swiftly advancing, hyperintelligent birds. People remark on the intelligence of corvids, and they’re correct. Crows, ravens, and their kin are very smart. They’re also coming for your horticultural supplies.
If you’re reading this at some point in the future, when the human race is relegated to the annals of bird history as some kind of combination of amusing pets and manual labor force, and our bird overlords have ushered in a new era of art nouveau solarpunk luxury forest communism, I apologize for not being at all sorry because that actually sounds awesome.
Marble Crow 