Large black crows are now out in the yard every blessed day. They come along every year around this same time, looking for pecans ripening on our trees. My husband will blast them with an air-horn when they get to making too much noise. The sound of the air-horn scares the cats, scares the barn swallows and the bluebirds, and scares me, but doesn't do all that much to the crows.
The crows are smart..... they will walk along the grass underneath the trees, all the while looking up at the branches. When they find a clump of pecans, they fly up to that branch, pick off a nut, and then fly out to the road with their prize. With the pecan in their beak, they bash it onto the pavement of the road until the shell cracks...... and then they munch on the nut pieces. This process is repeated until they've had their fill of pecans and fly off into the pasture to hunt for something else.
The squirrels are also pecan-hunting at this time, but they're not as loud nor as obnoxious as the crows. The squirrels can easily bite into the pecan shells with their teeth, and sometimes they will hang upside-down on the trunk of the tree, dropping the pieces of shell on the ground and just eating the nut. More often than not, either Mickey or Gatsby is out there watching the squirrels eat the pecans. Gatsby stays up on the porch and watches from a distance.... he's a smart cat and knows that he'll never catch one of those squirrels. Mickey is the more hopeful of the two cats..... he will sit as close to the squirrel as he can get, sometimes having to dodge the falling shells... almost daring the squirrel to come down to the ground so he can chase it.
I will be hearing the screeching of those crows from now till after Thanksgiving..... same goes for my husband's air-horn.
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