Eating Crow

It’s something I’ve noticed repeatedly on the years, that often an animal that has zero appeal to the public manages to become a zookeeper favorite. Sometimes, something near to the opposite also happens – an animal that the zookeeper would expect the public to have no interest in will, unexpectedly, become the crowd’s favorite.

I’m specifically thinking of a certain American crow. He had the distinction of being the only passerine (perching bird) I have ever worked with (not even a zebra finch or canary for me), illegally taken from the nest by a member of the public and raised, before being turned over to the zoo. Given his origins, it made sense to start him off as an education bird and he was initially housed in the mews, but never responded to training and handling. Dissatisfied with the housing situation for him, I eventually suggested that we make him an exhibit bird, and we moved him into our beaver exhibit, alongside some ducks, turtles, and herons.

That’s when the crow found stardom, and his personality really shone. When we were in the exhibit with him, he was still wary, seldom letting us approach close. With visitors on the outside of the exhibit, he became extremely personable.

The beaver exhibit had a fake lodge built into it with a window, so visitors could peak inside and see the beavers. The crow liked to sit on top of the lodge, where he could be right next to visitors with just mesh between them – the lack of an additional barrier at the one spot had never been a problem before. There, he would talk to visitors, sometimes even croaking a rough “Hello.” (He was probably a more reliable talker than any of our parrots). They would, inevitably, stick fingers in, which he would gently nibble, and they would scratch him on the back of the head. We probably should have put up another barrier, some finer mesh over that spot, sooner, but I think we were all so dumbfounded. Besides, we might have been worried that the visitors would riot. That crow quickly became the most popular animal in the zoo.

It's just as well, probably, that he accepted so many snack items from the public, no matter how much we begged for people not to feed him, because the crow never seemed to eat his actual diet.

An enormous number of visitors refused to believe that the crow was an actual zoo animal, instead assuming that he was a wild bird that had gotten in. Once a week, I’d have someone run up to me in a panic to let me know that a crow had gotten into the beaver exhibit. Yes, starlings, cardinals, finches, etc frequently flew into zoo exhibits (and, in some cases, they didn’t fly out) – but a hole big enough to admit the crow would have allowed the ducks and probably herons to get out too. Once or twice I even had visitors who seemed almost offended by the bird’s presence – what kind of zoo puts a crow on display? For the most part, people loved that bird, and he was easily the bird in the collection for which the most visitors knew his name.