Captain and the Crows

My mother has a little 12 pound chihuhua/daschound mix dog named Captain. She's the sweetest thing ever and just loves to cuddle. She doesn't really like to play much, but she likes to explore my mom's backyard for a few minutes every afternoon, then come right back in the house.

One afternoon not long ago, Captain was out in the backyard, my mom called her, and she wouldn't oome, so my mom went to check to see what was wrong. There was an injured crow on the grass, apparently with a broken wing because he tried to fly away and couldn't, being followed by Captain. The dog was following the crow around the backyard, not trying to kill it, just follow it!! Well the crow knew he was in trouble and was squawaking in distress. You've got to picture this, because the crow and the dog were almost the same size, and the dog didn't have any interest in killing the crow, she just wanted to follow the bird around.

Well, all that squawking was for a reason. Within a few minutes, three of the crows "friends" came to help out. They swooped down and started terrorizing Captain by trying to pull hair out of her back. They were protecting their injured crow friend. I had never seen anything like it. Captain, who is usually scared of her own shadow and was very brave with a single, injured crow, was out of there in no time flat. Two swoops to her back to peck at her was all it took. She made a beeline for the house.

That was one of the most interesting things I've seen in quite a while. I did a bit of research to see if it was typical crow behavior for them to protect each other, but I could not find the answer. I did find out that they usually mate for life, so maybe the husband was one of the three birds that came to protect the injured bird. In any event, the squawk noise of the crow was definitely a disstress call, and his friends came to help out. It was really amazing. Why Captain wanted to follow the bird and not kill him, I'll never know. Most dogs, large or small, would have tried to kill the crow.

I never liked crows. When I lived in Los Angeles there was a group of them that lived in a tree in the front of our house and they scared the hell out of me. I had a big Akita (dog) with lots of hair, and they used to torment her by swooping down and pecking hair out of her back. They have always given me the creeps, but I will think of them differently in the future. They're intelligent and protective, traits I admire, so I will think of them with more respect in the future even though I still don't like them.