Two or three years ago, I read a story that made me jealous. A girl had been leaving out food for the crows in her neighborhood, and they began to bring her gifts in return. They brought shiny things like beads and acorn caps and a necklace. That story has stuck with me all this time. I had a decent relationship with the cardinals at the original Park in Charleston. They would call out to me when the birdfeeders were empty. (And I always knew it was them, because they accused me of ignoring them in favor of spending too much time on "Facebook! Facebook!") Here at Park West we have a flock of chickadees who live in the giant spirea bush in the back corner of the yard, who stayed here all winter and depended on the assortment of five or so birdfeeders that Mr X keeps filled better than I do. Rather than fighting with the squirrels, trying to keep them out of the feeders, we just set out dried ears of corn for them. But as of yet, I have done nothing for the neighborhood crows. I have no idea whether they like the birdseed or corn that's already there. If I attempt to put peanuts out for them, it's guaranteed that Elsa and Murray will eat more than the crows would. I wondered what I could do as a nice gesture to them that wouldn't cause an imbalance in the bird social structure. I don't want crows to chase off the little chickadees. I don't want them swooping in on my dogs and cats. But it would be cool to have some sort of positive interaction with them.
I came up with a plan several weeks ago, but I had other issues that kept me from being able to settle down and attempt to create a tangible gift for the blackbirds. Going all the way back to the costume design company I had 23-24 years ago, I started collecting beads. I have thousands, maybe millions, of beads of all sizes and qualities. Most of them are seed beads (again, of varying degrees of quality). When my girls were teenagers, we made a lot of bead jewelry. My older daughter even took several handfuls of my beads with her, and still I have more than I know what to do with. I decided I would make several strings of bead, and set them outside to see whether anyone outside takes a liking to them.
By the time I had made a dozen pieces, I realized that it felt like I had created a basis of currency. I don't know that any of the animals will give me any of these sparkly trinkets back in exchange for anything at all. But what if I've dropped a trove of legal tender for the corvids to trade with each other? I'm spacing out the distribution. Today I went out with five pieces. One was a long piece with a dragonfly charm. Two were straight strips with random sized beads from tiny to chunky. Two were little circles that should have been light enough that the chickadees could fly away with them.
An hour after I set out the beads, I saw a squirrel sitting on one of the fence posts where I had set the heavy dragonfly charm trinket. He was fiddling with it with both hands, and I couldn't tell whether he was tasting every bead as he went past it, or saying the Rosary. From inside the door, I said out loud, "Don't eat it! It's not food!" Bump heard me and followed my gaze to the squirrel. He took off running and barking, and startled the squirrel into dropping the beads. After feeding the dogs dinner, I picked the beads up and put them back on the fence post, and then went to check and see whether others had been taken. Four were still there (including the one I replaced). One small loop was gone. It's supposed to be cold and rainy for days. so I will wait until next week to put out the next cache. I'll let you know how the experiment goes.
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