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My Smartest Best Friend was my Pet Crow!
Picture of a crow
The Day We Met
I believe I was about nine years old and as usual I was outside playing and bugging people like most curious nine year olds back then, when I noticed he was following me. At first he was very sneaky about it, he would fly from tree to tree and wait for me to move first. Then he got a little braver and would land about 3 feet from me and he wasn't scared like most other birds when I moved they would fly away, but not him, he just stayed there looking at me.
I thought that maybe I could perhaps get him in the house, well, the basement actually, my Mother probably would not have approved of him in the house since she was terrified of birds and he was a big bird. So I thought I would get him some food, I couldn't go back in the house because when I was little and you were told to go out and play, you didn't dare go back into the house for a few hours at least. I decided I would go to the basement and get some dry dog food and make a trail for him to follow me. I emerged from the basement with his "treats" and there he was already! He had followed me with out me forcing him too! I felt like he was trying to tell me something. I would talk to him and he would turn his little head sideways like he understood me.
I gave him a piece of the dry dog food and he pecked at it and pushed it around with his beak, then I noticed he was hopping when he walked , he had a crippled foot. Not newly crippled , but it had healed crippled or maybe he was born that way. He hopped over to a water puddle and put his dog food in it. This bird was so smart I thought to myself. I was so afraid to go in the house at dinner time, because I knew my newly found friend would fly away.
Taking it to the next level
When I awoke the next morning and ran outside with some bread in my pocket, I couldn't find him at first, then I heard him I looked up and there he was still here, almost as if he were waiting on me! I held the bread in my fingers and he flew down and gently took it from my hands showing no fear whatsoever! This went on for about a week or so.
It was time for school to start back again and I didn't want to leave my new best friend. For the last week or so that is what he had become my best friend, every where I went , he followed! By now his diet consisted of dog food, bread, fruit loop cereal and anything else I could manage to sneak out of the house. I had told my Mom, but she didn't believe me, I think she thought it was a made up friend by a lonely child. I was thrilled I told my cousins and my best friend Julie that I went to school with and her Mom was our school's secretary.
So , the first day of school came and it was time for me to go, I had missed the school bus so I had to walk, it wasn't very far, but now days you wouldn't let your child walk that far alone. I set off down the road and I noticed my new feathered friend following me, so I told him to go home and I didn't notice him anymore after that.
I had made it through the first day of school just thinking about my friend and I had hoped he would be at home waiting on me. I rushed home and changed clothes and ran outside. I couldn't find him anywhere. I started to cry, I knew it, he thought I had abandoned him so he left or he got lost trying to go to school with me. I ran into the house crying to my Mom and went to my room steadily looking out the window for my friend.
A few hours later, the phone rang and then I heard my Mom calling me. The look on her face was like complete amazement. She told me to get my shoes on that we had to go. "Where?" I asked, as I didn't want to leave for fear my friend would return and I would not be there. "You'll see" she said. So I climbed in the car and we pulled in the driveway of my best friend Julie's house. "Mom , why are we here?" and she said, "Well, it seems as though your bird followed you to school" . 'So what are we doing here?" "Well", she starts explaining, " He followed you all the way to the doors of school and when Mr. Joe the janitor went to close the doors he hopped on in the school." So Mr.Joe had a bird cage and got him in there and Julie's Mom was going to take him home to set him free in the woods behind their house, but when Julie got home she told her Mom that was your bird, so here we are" . I was so thrilled! From that day on we were inseparable, when it got to cold outside my Mom had a friend that built things so he built him a cage and you would think being a wild bird he wouldn't like going in the cage, but he would get in on his own and come out when we asked him to. He would go outside and fly around and then willingly hop up the stairs to the house and get back in his cage. He allowed me to pick him up and we would play, he would sit on my arm for hours and he loved all things shiny!
He remained my best friend until I was fourteen years old, we had to move to Georgia and we knew he couldn't make the trip that long. Each time he would get in a moving vehicle he would pant and pace . So we had to give him to a wild life refuge that took care of injured wild animals.
I never saw him again, but I thought of him frequently and I have never found a more trustworthy, loyal and intelligent best friend since then that could compare to my Rueben.
Crow's are very intelligent birds! Watch this video!
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Comments
What a great story! I wonder whether your crow was raised as someonen's pet and then abandoned. I hope he found a friend at the sanctuary . . . . (I linked to this in my hub)
Jacqueline,
I am not 100 per cent sure but I think crows are scavengers and will eat almost anything. My mom live in the country and she leaves all the dinner scraps for them. White bread is very bad for ALL Birds...no nutritional value and it makes them bloated.
Wow that is amazing! I was just looking up on the internet what crows like to eat as I have had one that has come to my garden everyday for the last few months! I have named him George lol not sure if he is male or female but he kind of suits George :)! To get my attention he will hop around the fence and look in all my windows lol It really is amazing! When he first started coming he wouldn't come to close but now I can stand right beside him! I have just been feeding him bread and fruit but would like to give him some other nice treats! I really do adore him, I also have 2 cats and even they have got used to him and vice versa! Sometimes the seagulls will try and get the food but George doesn't like that he will chase them off lol! He will however share his food with a magpie that comes from time to time!! I'd never noticed before but crows really are magnificent birds! I hope he will continue to visit me for a long time to come :)
I have a crow. Have had him since he didn't have feathers! Saved his life, literally. Its been over a year and he is too much for me to handle now. I have a chronic Illness (Lyme Disease) and the stress is too much. He is always dive bombing us and the dogs. He teases them with food and them in the face. I love him dearly and he loves me. I've found a home for him a few hours away where he can be with other crows. I tried as hard as I could to keep this bird that I hand raised. Our bond is tight, but they are wild animals and do not make good pets.
I love you Rhett! He will be leaving me soon........ :(
I love this sotry.I wish Ihad a crow for a friend!
I had a pair of pet crows when I was a teenager We named them Amos and Andy - fantastic pets...had to clip their wings though after they flew into my neighbors yard and sucked the insides out of his prize tomato he wanted to go to seed - he couldn't understand why every day he'd look at it and it was getting smaller til he turned it over and saw they had poked a hole in it and ate the insides out. We kept them in the yard like chickens. So then they would tease my mother when she came in the yard to hang the laundry. One would distract her while the other would pull clothing out of the basket and run away with socks or shirts. If she dropped a clothspin they'd swoop in and grab it. She'd chase them and when she stopped they would drop the clothspin and crow at her as if to say ha ha you can't catch me...then she'd renew her chase and they'd grab the clothspin and run some more. Eventually she was complaining all her clothspins were missing - in the fall I was raking leaves and found a pile of clothspins burried in the corner of the yard behind a bush. Yeah they were a lot of fun!
hi. i have enjoyed all the posts and especially the story. we took in an injured crow, Sammy. He is missing one eye and has a severely broken wing. he lives in a cage in our house. we have two small children. he has learned to imitate their voices/noises perfectly. He barks like our dogs, sings and is generally very amusing. He is so good with voices that we sometimes aren't sure if it was one of the children or him calling us.
He comes out of his cage sometimes and walks around the house because he can't fly at all. in the warm weather he likes to sit in the yard with us (but only if we stay right next to him). I just wish we could put some type of diaper on him for his house adventures. His favorite thing is to taunt the dogs with food and then bite them in the nose. He is extremely smart and i can only imagine what he will learn through the years. I'm glad to hear that other people have found such love for a crow as we have.
This is a beautiful story!
I enjoyed your story and I'm happy for you that you had this friend. We left our African Grey at a wonderful sanctuary in southern Arizona (The Oasis) when we moved to Hawaii. At the sanctuary there is a 40' x 40' flight aviary for just the African Greys. Still, we miss him. It's hard to try to do what's best for the bird, isn't it?
the loyalty and intelligence you describe is exactly like my crow, "bird." ravens are classified with dolphins, chimps, and humans in intellgence. everytime you see a crow, you are looking at an 8-year-old human with wings. i'm writing a novel based on my experience with bird. it's at hubpages.com/profile/patrick+fealey. thanks for sharing your experience, a rare communion between man and animal.
patrick
I enjoyed reading your hub. I have a flock of about 20 wild ravens that I feed each morning by putting dried dog food out in the back yard. They come each morning right on time and if I am late or decide to eat my breakfast before feeding them, they will come to the window and look inside the house and call to me. They are very intelligent and it is a joy to see them interact. It is interesting that they have accepted me as a sort of protector for them. If there is a cat in the backyard stalking the birds, the ravens will call to me to come out and chase him away. I have learned what their sound is for "cat" and noticed that they have different sounds for other threats. Each spring the flock brings their newly hatched babies to meet me. They seem to have a ritual. At first they will accompany the young ones to where I put out the food and keep watch over them, but soon the adults will disappear and for a few months none of the adults will come for their morning feeding leaving only the young ones to fend for themselves. Later towards fall, the older ravens will rejoin the now older babies and the flock resumes its routine. I have often thought that a raven would make a wonderful pet.
I love crows and enjoyed this Hub. - Thanks.
What a beautiful friendship. How lucky you both were. Thanks for this.
Hi,
Such a heartwarming story! How fortunate you were to have had that experience. I find something very appealing about them.
Thanks for sharing,
Trish
Neat hub! I like Crows too and also believe they are very clever. Thanx for the nice story.
lb
This is a great story. There was a big crow (I think he was a crow) that used to hang around my neighborhood. I first heard him at work, then later outside of my apartment building. He would say "Hello!" in a very distinct voice. I think he may have been someone's pet, and been taught to talk.
What a beautiful story! What a wonderful memory! Thank you.
- Author
Thanks for commenting Funnebone-
Yea, he was and still is as you can see dear to my heart.
I love cats and dogs too, but when you allow them to come and go, it seems sometimes they only come back for the food.
My crow would let me know when he was ready to go back in the house and he never flew out of our yard though he had every opportunity too.
That was a great story....my father adopted a dove much in the same way. There is something magical about an animal befriending you...it is the purest love
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