Halloween

Marvin poses on our fence, adding some corvid authenticity to the Halloween decorations.

Halloween in East Vancouver.

Chills and thrills, colour, crows and a bit of junk food thrown in for good measure.

It gets pretty spooky around here in late October. Being only a few blocks from “Fright Nights” at Playland, every night-time dog walk is accompanied by eerie sound effects and piercing screams floating on the chilly breeze.

In writing a corvid-centric Halloween post, I’m in no way agreeing that crows are even slightly creepy or scary. They’re so much more comforting than everything I see in the news these days, that I continue to mull the idea of a children’s book about them.

Things continue to be rather stressful around here as I, and neighbours, spend many hours writing letters to City officials in an effort to save the local poplar trees (and Marvin and Mavis’s nesting site) from destruction.

As a bit of diversion from truly terrifying international news and local activism, I’ve been pursuing a rather silly project.

My restorative therapy — training Marvin and Mavis to pose on pumpkins.

At first the orange alien was too intimidating to explore.

Marvin rejects pumpkin

Motivation was needed.

Matching the colour scheme of the season, Hawkins Cheezies were the answer.* *Somewhere, a long time ago, I read that crows and raven share our human weakness for these fluorescent orange snacks. I’d tested this theory in previous years and found it to be true. Since I share their weakness for these splendid morsels, I rarely buy them. At Halloween I make an exception because you can buy them in the tiny Trick or Treat size. That way, if you only open one bag, the nutritional disaster is relatively contained.

Plus, most will be given to neighbourhood children.

Honest.

Marvin was the first to brave getting up close and personal with the newcomer.

Pumpkin Landing

Pumpkin feet

It only took him a few minutes to get quite comfy with the new landing platform.

M and M with pumpkin

Mavis is a lot more cautious than Marvin and, for a couple of days, she watched wistfully as he scored all the Cheezies.

Finally, yesterday, she gathered her courage and made her “moon-landing equivalent.

Mavis on A Pumpkin

Pumpkin Stride Mavis

One small step for Mavis, a great step for crow-kind.

Sadly for them both, today is Halloweeen, and the pumpkin has to be carved and the Cheezies offered to the local children.

Maybe I’ll hold a bag back for them. Maybe two, so we can share them.

And perhaps a few Coffee Crisps, just for me …

Happy Halloween everyone.

Sppoky Marvin

Boo!

*PLEASE NOTE: while crows will eat almost anything and, like humans, have a weakness for junk food — Cheezies should not form a significant part of their diet (or yours.) Generally I offer my corvid visitors more wholesome snacks like unsalted peanuts, good quality cat or dog kibble, occasional chopped up boiled egg and dried grubs (from Wild Birds Unlimited.)

I always love to see crows, but I must admit I’m always a bit sad to see them typecast as harbingers of death and all things spooky, especially at Halloween.

I was torn between excitement at seeing a crow on a book of stamps I just bought at the post office, and disappointment that they were supposed to be “haunted”.

My new “red sky crow” pendant would seem, at first blush, to be part of the problem.

But, I’d like people who wear it to know the actual story behind the image. It’s a story that paints a truer picture of people being far, far scarier than crows.

This summer in Vancouver was rather frightening. I wrote something about it in my early blog, Crowpocalypse 2015.

In some ways it was great — day after day of dry sunny weather. Great for the beach and outdoor activities. But it was a brutal summer too, with the drought making the usual summer wildfire season much more severe. Lack of water made it a disastrous summer for wildlife of all kinds.

During the hottest part of the summer I was in the habit of getting up early to walk and work before it got too warm. In July there were so many forest fires in the surrounding areas that Vancouver was blanketed in smoke for several days. At dawn things looked particularly apocryphal when the sun rose, an eerie red ball on the horizon.

Smokey the Crow

So, this is where the Red Sky Crow came from. It’s not a spooky Halloween Crow at all. In fact it’s a “wake up people and smell the climate-change coffee” sort of crow.

Red Dawn Crow

It just so happens that the colours of the image and pendant are perfect for Halloween and fall – but if you do wear it, or see someone else wearing it — remember (and share) the real scary story behind it.