Quaker Boy Crankin Crow Call

 

 

        Despite my dad wondering why anyone in the world would want a crow call, and despite losing the one I once got in a cereal box when I was a kid, I ordered a Quaker Boy Crankin Crow Call a couple decades ago when I was a mailman.  Stopping now and then along my route, I would stop the truck and blow the crow call, and found that it not only works, but it got the gathering crows in the trees above all worked up.  They sounded angry.  I thought it was really neat.

       After work, in the postal annex parking lot, with no trees around, I began calling crows before getting into my car.  And here they came!  They formed a tornado of crows above me, circling over my head and all of them cawing as if angry.  It was awesome.  If you doubt my story, there's an eye witness.  My co-worker, Lynnette Corsi, was standing across the parking lot, staring with her mouth open.  This crow call is really fun.

        And it's not my only adventure with crows.  When we lived at the Agate Bay trailer court near Bellingham WA, some neighbors took a trip and had my wife Micki take care of their many birds while they were gone.  One of the birds was a crow in a large cage outside the trailer.  Several times, in walking over to see how Micki was doing, I would stop to talk to the crow.  Then one day when I came home from work, Micki and another neighbor were in a panic.  Micki ran up to me and hollered, "You know that net we have?  Where is it?"  I found it for her as she told me that the crow had gotten loose and was up in a tree.  How the two planned to catch it with a little net, I'll never know, but I followed them to the tree, across the driveway from the bird-lovers' trailer.  As they walked toward the tree trunk, the crow suddenly flew down from a branch and landed on the pavement just a few feet in front of me.  I squatted down and the crow ran to me, as if to say, "Please save me from those crazy women with the net!"  I reached down and easily grabbed the bird, and carried it to its cage and put it in, to the amazement of Micki and her friend, and myself. 

       Years later, when delivering mail in Everett WA, I was parked in front of the office of Emerald Apartments (now the Bluffs at Evergreen) on Casino Road, and was putting empty mail trays back into the truck when I heard a tick tick tick on the truck's roof.  I stepped back and was amazed to see a large crow peeking down at me.  "Well hello," I said, and the crow jumped down onto my bare arm!  He just stood there, completely content with his new friend.  I walked with him into the office to show to the lady there, and she was amazed, too.  Then suddenly the crow took off and flew through the building, over the pool tables, and banged into the glass of the shut sliding doors!  After seeing the crow was okay, I explained to the lady and I was late on my route and had to go, and left her the job of getting the crow out of the building.  (I knew her, and often joked with her, and she took it as yet another Dale Lund prank.) 

      These last two stories happened without the Quaker Boy Crankin Crow Call.  Now with it, I'm sure my adventures aren't over.