Harassed

This morning Randi and Earl were harassed by two crows.  I was rearranging my Pinterest boards when I heard an inordinate amount of crow squawking and so I left my boards and exited the building to investigate.  The squawking was so intense that I was sure my backyard had been transformed into Farmer McCall's farm and that Thomas the Train was going to show up to shoo away all of the crows like he does in Thomas' Muddy Matters DVD.  Alas, my backyard had not been transformed and what I did see was Randi staring curiously up into the pine tree where two crows were very busy squawking and throwing sticks down at Randi.  The two were viciously ripping apart my pine tree and then tossing the sticks and needles onto Randi's head.  She didn't care and neither did I because I hate the pine tree. During this time Earl paced anxiously a bit farther away.  I was just about to go inside when the crows took off and it was immediately apparent that one of the crows was injured and because of his injury was unable to fly very high off the ground.  You can imagine how Randi and Earl felt about that.  The crow managed to get himself up onto the electric wire behind the house, but then swooped down again; this time so close I lost my breath and Earl got so scared he ran into the house to hide.

One time Clark and Sarah attacked a crow in the Little Backyard and maimed it.  Clark had crow feathers in his mouth.  It happened so fast I can't even say how it happened.  I do know that the crow couldn't fly away and was unresponsive to any of the options I tried to provide it.  (I mostly tried to get it to hop on a shovel so I could put it in the front yard.)  I called my dad and when I told him that there was a maimed crow in the backyard he said, "Ok.  Here's what you need to do.  You need to get a shovel.  And then hit it over the head and kill it."  I don't remember exactly how I responded to that solution, but I'm pretty sure it involved screaming.  In the end I just left the crow in the backyard;  his crow cronies were circling around and making me nervous and I had to be somewhere.  A couple of days later the neighbors called animal control when the crow managed to get into their yard.  If I'd known that was an option I would have done that myself.

This morning's crow harassment was all after Earl pulled a dirty, dirty move this morning.  He got up off the rug, cried at the door and so I got myself up out of bed and opened the door for him.  When I got back to my room he had swooped in on my spot on the bed.  Trickery.  And I fell for it.


Wednesday after gymnastics me, my dad and Max took the cart out to see the pigs before they went off to the fair this weekend.  There may have been some disappointment because there were no cows, but to be fair every time some screamed "moo- cow" I responded with, "No moo-cows; just hamburger now."  The entire way back from gymnastics was filled with "Moo-cow!  Grandpa. Pig!  Grandpa.  Oink. Oink.  Grandpa! Grandpa. Pig.  Moo-cow."  We also saw some chickens and sheep, but the best part was the pig on a diet.  I think it's safe to say your weight is out of control if you're a pig on a diet.

The desert is beautiful.