Crow Journal, day 1

ByJohn Brown

 

I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Or at least some peanuts and cheese. I want to make some friends with a couple of crows or ravens.

I’m a little hesitant. One or two buddies, okay. A freaking tribe swirling around the house, pooping on man and beast, or, horrors, tormenting the cats and demanding food–well, that’s something to write about, isn’t it?

Zing.

Besides, I’ve only ever seen a pair. How many friends can they have?

So I braved my fears and gathered six raven and crow calls from the internet. Then I put them in a play list, stuck my speakers in my office window, and began broadcasting crow. The mixture probably said something like, “Hey, there sweet momma, get off my branch you hawk turd!, can somebody pass me a napkin?” It’s got to pique their curiosity at least.

With the calls running I set out some cheese and peanuts at the edge of the lawn out our basement door. It appears these folks eat anything and tend to like fatty food. When I go to Logan next I’ll get some potato chips.

Results: 

1. Three buzzards swooped up the slope and passed by.

2. The herd of cattle down the hill and across the street all stood and stared up at the house.

3. One of the cats came around to see what the commotion was all about.  Stuck its head through the deck railings to get a look down where the sounds were coming from.  

I played the calls all during lunch. Nothin. So I turned them off.

At about 3:40 PM I set out for my hike. Put out the speakers again and departed. On my way back down the hill at about 4:40 PM I saw the crow pair (or maybe they’re ravens) flying up the hill about 200 yards south of the house. They were dinking around in the air not trying to get anywhere fast.

Hustled down and checked out the peanuts and cheese. Nothin. No sign of any visitors coming to investigate. Will try again tomorrow.

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    Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin + Interview

    ByJohn Brown

    I have read few books more interesting than Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior.

    In it she describes her world of autism and how it helped her a perspective into animals unlike any other expert in the field. She can literally see what we block out. It’s part of what helped her make a huge impact on the meat packing industry.

    And it’s had an impact on her. When she was visiting her grandparents once in Arizona, she saw a squeeze chute in operation on a ranch. She saw the cattle calm, for the most part, in the chute. “Watching those cattle calm down,” she says, “I knew I needed a squeeze chute of my own.” So when she got back home she built a human-sized one with the help of her teacher. “I got through my teenage years thanks to my squeeze machine and my horses.”

    Grandin is not a vegetarian activitst (she eats meat herself) or a brutal slayer. She has taken the middle ground between the fantatics that want to prevent the consumption of all meat, on one hand, or totally disregard the life of animals on the other. She writes, she says, “because I wish animals could have more than just a low-stress life and a quick, painless death. I wish animals could have a good life, too, with something useful to do. I think we owe them that.”

    Temple has dozens and dozens of insights into animals, which she shares here. You’ll learn about rapist roosters and the problem of one-trait breeding, whether prediators find it “fun to kill a groundhog” (yes, she says, they do), whether animals have true cognition, and so many other things it’s impossible to list them here. I was fascinated on every page. If you have anything to do with animals, you’re going to LOVE this book.

    Get the book. Read it. In the meantime, watch a 27 minute interview of Temple by Doug Fabrizio on Utah NOW. I caught this on TV flipping through the channels and couldn’t look away. This is a fascinating interview of a fascinating woman.

    Source:Temple Grandin on Utah NOW

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  • TED

    ByJohn Brown

    I LOVE TED.

    No, I’m not coming out of any closet. I’m talking the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) forum. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

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    Or here’s Hans Rosling’s “Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen” and his New insights on poverty and life around the world.

    Or how about Howard Rheingold’s “Way-new collaboration”There is, if done well, very few things as stimulating as an excellent speech. Thank you TED for providing a way to revive this marvelous genre by sharing it on the internet.

    Go to TED. But beware: you may end up unable to stop listening to one fascinating idea after another.

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