I was showing my sister-in-law around the fruit trees in back when suddenly she did a startled double take.

Oh, that’s the dead crow.

The !??!

I explained.

She burst out laughing, just like I did when the lady at the bird center told me all the crows in the area would caaaah a funeral together at their fallen comrade, and then leave and not come back–because they didn’t want to be where a crow had died.

The trick, though, is to set it out at night and then retrieve it at night so they don’t associate you with harming it and that peach tree it was under was long since done and I’d only been remembering the retrieving part during the daytime. Which wouldn’t do.

I have seen zero crows in the yard–though I did see one croaking away at full blast at the top of the tree next door yesterday, where it had direct eye contact with the deceased. No translators were available.

What mine really seemed to protect against was squirrels–they clearly did not want to go near that beak.

Nobody has confessed to ruffling its feathers.

But at this point I figure it’s been dead out there for three weeks, and if I put it over in the apple tree it will have moved and thereby be deemed alive–telling the squirrels to scram and the crows to come celebrate. Free food!

Jennifer’s guffawing did it. I remembered. I bagged it.