Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “If men wore feathers, very few of them would be clever enough to be crows.”

During my career as a game warden, I had many encounters with crows, especially crows that were taken from their nest when they were young and made into pets. This was, and still, is illegal.

Two of these tame crow incidents stand out in my mind. Both involve a crow visiting local elementary schools. The first incident involved the Monroeton Elementary School, which was located in the country. I received a call from a teacher saying that a crow had been visiting the school and interrupting classes.

The crow would sit on a window ledge and continually peck at the window pane. Although the kids were delighted with the crow’s visits, the teacher said the crow interrupted the class. When the kids went out for recess the crow would fly down and try to peck at or land on their heads, which really scared the children and many shed tears.

Armed with a large bass net and bird feed to lure the crow to an area where I could net it, I set out on a mission. I had a problem. Although the crow would allow the children to get close, it did not allow adults to get close.

The crow would land far from my reach. When the children returned to their classrooms, the crow would leave only to return for the next recess. In the meantime, I tried to find out if anyone in the area had a pet crow. No luck.

I would often return when I had a call that the crow was back. One time I took a tranquilizer gun. I wasn’t sure if a tranquilizer would work on birds as it does on animals, but the children became upset that I was going to shoot the crow, and I ended up scrapping the tranquilizer idea.

My next step was to place several great-horned owl decoys around the school to see if I could scare the crow away. This did not work. I even spent time at the school when it was closed, and carried my shotgun, but the crow never appeared. In the end, the crow left and never returned.

The second incident was at the Gillett Elementary School, which was located in the middle of a small town. This incident occurred many years later and approximately fifty miles from the Monroeton school. This crow had the same mo’dus operandi, that of interrupting classes and dive bombing the children during recess. This crow also played havoc on the neighbors by dive bombing people going to the post office or the store. One lady that had hung her wash out on a clothesline found that the crow pulled out all of the clothespins and the clean wash was found on the ground. This incident ended the same way with the crow winning and eventually leaving.

Crows do not have many enemies other than man and the great-horned owl, which is the chief predator of the crow. The reason I used the owl decoys was to try and scare the crows away from the schools. If a band of crows find an owl that is trying to sleep away the daylight hours, they will attack the owl with such vigor that the owl will eventually be forced from his perch and beat a hasty retreat.

The crows will chase and harass the poor owl for hours on end. These crow/owl incidents rarely end in death for either, however on rare occasions, a crow will get too close to an owl’s sharp talons and become a meal. The owl evens the score at night when it has been known to take an adult crow off the roost and take young from the nest.

One of Aesop Fables depicts how smart the crow is:

“In a spell of dry weather, when the birds could find very little to drink, a thirsty crow found a pitcher with a little water in it. But the pitcher was high and had a narrow neck, and no matter how he tried, the crow could not reach the water. The poor thing felt as if he must die of thirst.

“Then an idea came to him. Picking up some small pebbles, he dropped them into the pitcher one by one. With each pebble, the water rose a little higher until at last it was near enough so he could drink.”

The moral to this story is in a pinch, a good use of our wits may help us out.

Crows are survivors. Almost everyone has seen a crow eating from a road-killed animal. The crow’s timing is such that it leaves the dead carcass just before a vehicle arrives, flies in a small circle as the car passes and then returns to feed on the dead animal. Even on our highways where vehicles are traveling at 65 miles per hour and faster, the crow is agile enough to avoid being struck.

Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.