Lame Foot and Others

Several months ago, Boss Crow came to the house and made contact with Pat. She fed him, and we have been in the crow business ever since. After the first session, he always brought two other birds with him. So, the three daily visitors were the Boss Crow, the crow with the mangled foot, and a smaller crow that we took to be the mate of one of the others. It was just the three of them for several weeks, and then no one showed up for a while. After a few weeks the crows returned, and there were five of them. The two additional guys were a little smaller, so we assumed the birds had been nesting and that these were a couple of offspring. As the days passed, there were sometimes three, sometimes five, and, once in a while, as many as twenty-one.

We realized that Boss Crow was no longer with the group. We had always figured him as a front man, so we thought he must be our looking for human benefactors to feed his crow friends. The guy with the mangled foot has taken over the leadership position.

Pat has simplified things by calling him Lame Foot. Lame Foot is definitely in charge. If Pat hasn’t put the food out by the time he arrives, he gives the four caws to get her attention and to summon the rest of the group. If the others don’t show up within a couple of minutes, he gives the call louder.

Pat and Lame-Foot have become good friends. He sometimes drops in several times during the day. He makes sure that Pat notices him by flying low past the living room window or by flying over the patio. On these visits, he ignores the food and water as he is just there to talk. Pat tells him a story, just as she would for you and I. He listens carefully, and then tells his story. When he is done, he flies away.

It’s too bad that he has the deformed foot, but that pretty much makes him the only crow that can be easily identified. If it’s just three crows, they are Lame Foot, Bouncer, and Clucker. The crows seem to come now in groups of three or twelve.

Bouncer- Pat calls this guy Bouncer because rather than walking on the driveway, he bounces. It’s as if he had springs on the bottom of his feet. Pat says that when she talks to him, he sometimes gets excited and bounces even more.

Clucker- This is the guy that always clucks like a chicken. He must have been hanging out in someone’s barnyard and talking to the chickens. Clucker sometimes follows Pat to the grocery store and back. When she gets out of the car, she can hear him clucking to let her know he is there.

A-Hole- This guy just started coming around, and Pat thinks he is a troublemaker. He doesn’t seem to have any friends as he is always by himself. When he comes in, he spends a lot of time getting a big drink of water. When he is ready to fly away, he hops up on the edge of the bowl and pushes off. This always causes the bowl to turn over, thus spilling the water. That means no one else can get a drink until Pat refills the bowl. Pat thinks he does this on purpose so the others can’t get a drink. For this reason, she calls him an a-hole. I agreed until I thought about it. I believe the rim of the bowl feels more like the limb of a tree, and it feels more natural to push off from it than the concrete driveway. I relayed my theory to Pat, and she shot it down. She said that one afternoon that crow dumped the water bowl three times in a row. Our son, Doug, happened to be here and he refilled the water bowl each time. There is no question about it, that crow is an a-hole.

Dave Thomas

10/24/2024