Crow Haters United by Common Caws

If anything bugs me more than being jarred from sleep by a hedge trimmer, it’s being awakened by a dad-blamed crow.

How many mornings have I fumbled for my slingshot while those soulless screamers perched outside in the treetops, calling out to . . . whom?

To other dad-blamed crows, that’s who.

So when the mysterious voice left a message on my answering machine just before I left on vacation, I took note: “I have a simple subject for you to consider: crows.”

When I returned, a follow-up letter had arrived.

“The crows are taking over!” George Arneal Jr. wrote. “They are NOT songbirds at all but are loud and obnoxious. What could (should) we do?”

He suggested three possibilities:

1. A 50-cent bounty “for each pair of feet, no questions asked.”

2. Selective breeding so they get too big to fly.

3. Careful trapping and removal of them to a far-off place.

Just getting warmed up, Arneal then submitted his own one-page script of a conversation between those TV cartoon crows of the late 1950s, Heckle and Jeckle. I’d do Arneal an injustice to excerpt it, but his story line involved worms, mockingbird eggs and crows cawing during his backswing on the golf course.

I couldn’t blame you for wondering at this point whether the real story is the crow situation or Arneal’s passion on the subject. His wife, Dixie Lee, laughingly says her husband, a retired 30-year man with Ford Motor Co., can really get going when he’s wound up. When I ask about her husband’s letter and Heckle and Jeckle script, she says, “I had to type the damn thing.”

Crows’ Feat: a Takeover!

Arneal says he started noticing the bird drop-off a year or so ago.

“I live in a mobile home park and it’s pretty quiet here,” he says. “We used to have other bird calls. Now, nothing but crows. I mentioned to some friends that I was working on this and without exception they said, “By God, it’s about time. It’s out of control.”

Arneal plays golf regularly at El Toro and says crows are rampant. “There’s a window in the cafeteria at the snack bar and this huge crow, the biggest I’ve ever seen, he sees his image and thinks it’s another crow and throws himself at this window. He keeps going and going; he doesn’t give up.”

Doth Arneal protest too much? Perhaps, except for this: He’s right.

Sylvia Gallagher describes herself as the bird information chairperson for the local Sea and Sand Audubon Society. She says the group’s latest counting of crows showed a marked increase from a generation ago.

The five-year beak count ending in 1996 identified an average of 1,820 crows in the 15-mile-diameter area centered in Huntington Beach. That was 50% greater than the three preceding five-year periods, which had remarkably consistent crow counts, Gallagher says.

Gallagher agrees that Orange County crows are pesky and too numerous. They eat chicks and eggs of other birds, including some that are endangered.

However, she’s quick to add, they belong to a protected species. Killing them is illegal.

Exactly what Arneal feared.

Having no advice for Arneal, I can only direct him to a Web site that features “Frequently Asked Questions About Crows.”

It verifies another of Arneal’s claims: He’s not the only one worried about crows.

A sampling of the questions:

* We have a pair of crows tearing our windshield wiper blades off. Can you offer some advice?

* Why do crows congregate in large numbers to sleep?

* I saw crows fighting and it looked like one was going to kill the other. Why would they do that?

The answers to those and other questions were provided by a Cornell University professor.

One final bit of bad news for Arneal. When I ask Gallagher of the Audubon Society why crows are proliferating, she says: “They’re very smart.”

In what way?

“In every way,” she says. “They’re generally more able to solve problems than to depend on instinct. That’s what I mean by smart. They don’t do something because it’s programmed in their genes. They do it because they’ve learned it works.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to [email protected]