The Pet Pest

Most kids have a pet at one time in their life, be it a dog or a cat or some crawly type creature. I think what I had was rather unusual. I had a pet crow. Now this is something that you wouldn't normally have, but when you lived on the prairies, nothing is really normal when you think about it in today's terms. We had gone to a church convention on the other side of the province. While some of us kids were exploring the regions of the farm that we were camping at, we stumbled across a nest that had a baby crow in it. It appeared at least to us, that the mother had abandoned this baby crow and it needed our attention. With some cajoling and promising, we convinced Dad to let us take it home. So off we went. Stopping every so often so that we could clean up the bird poop and feed it small pieces of raw meat, and use an eye dropper to give it water.



The crow with the really unique name of Caw Caw, lived in the garage. It ate raw meat and learned how to drink water out of a bowl. This crow grew to be quite big but had no idea how to really fit in with nature. It flew away but always came back. It would ride on my shoulder as I rode my bike. When I rode down to the Post Office to get the mail, it would fly to the top of the building and when I came out, it would fly back to my shoulder. This was pretty cool. You always hoped though, that it went to the bathroom prior to the ride.



After awhile, it seemed its incessant cawing became a real thorn in the side to our elderly next door neighbor. He threw rocks at it and Caw Caw actually knew the hatred that the old man had towards it. It mastered the art of dive bombing this old man and he was furious. It did not help that the old man's son was also the mayor of the Village. Yes, you guessed it. Caw Caw needed to be taken to the wild and live off of road kill.



One afternoon we packed Caw Caw up and took him way out into the country. He/she spread its wings and made a freedom fly and we got in the truck and drove away fast so it could not come near the vehicle.



For many months after, every time I heard a crow caw I wondered if it was Caw Caw. I even called them to see if they would land. But that day never came. Even to this day, every time I hear a crow caw, I think of Caw Caw and wondered what ever to that spoiled bird that thought it was human.