[TN-Bird] This wasn't a Super Bowl commercial -

Life imitating art dept.:
While driving to Greeneville, Greene County,  shortly before 9 a.m. 
Monday, Jan. 27, 2003, on U.S. Highway 11E, I observed an American Crow, 
Corvus brachyrhynchus, alight on the highway ahead of me as I neared 
Chuckey-Doak School. It appeared to be working over something with its 
bill, but no road kill or other object was apparent.
As I drew near, at 65 mph, the crow took wing as I closed from about 100 
meters, and as I came up to it I observed it carrying in its beak a 
completely flattened Coca Cola can.
I drove past without slowing and did not see where the crow went with 
the can, but it was able to gain altitude easily, and could have carried 
the can to the top of the nearest utility pole, or to the nearest 
recycling center for that matter.
Weather conditions were bright sunshine.
I am not going to draw any conclusions or conjectures from this behavior.
A few years ago I sent Wallace Coffey a Round Table note about the same 
time of year recording an observation of House Finches eating black 
walnut meats from nuts in the road crushed by passing cars and then 
flying to a nearby pasture, where they were observed taking salt from a 
salt block left for cattle. On that occasion I concluded that the House 
Finches must have been watching the Super Bowl and acquired a taste for 
salted nuts.
For some reason Mr. Coffey chose not to publish my insight in the Migrant.
So I am not going to suggest that perhaps American Crows have seen what 
a mess people have left the world in, and have begun to pick up after 
us. To make such an absurd leap of logic would next have the crows 
actually taking the cans to a recycling center, or maybe even suggesting 
that perhaps Don Miller has trained them and is paying them off with 
road kill while becoming the king of recycled cans.
That would be patently ridiculous, given the current deflated price for 
recycled aluminum cans.
I once raised two crows in a condemned apartment in Minneapolis in a 
space where the landlord had removed the sewer pipe from upstairs and we 
put chicken wire over the opening and inserted perches for Claymore and 
Hard Ground, whom my room mate had raised since they were not much above 
downy young. From occasionally offering them a treat like a penny or a 
nail, I know that crows are inordinately fond of shiny objects, but I'm 
not even going to suggest that.
I leave it to the readers of this list to conjecture in your own minds, 
just what this crow was up to.
James Brooks
Jonesborough, TN


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