My Friend Crow

Why do we have a scent in our product line named, “My Friend Crow”?

It’s a long-ish but heartwarming story:

Long before Raven Botanica was even a glimmer, I started gardening and enjoying my back yard as much as I could before work, after work and on my weekends. I got to recognize the “locals”, cute little chipmunks, that evil squirrel™ (more on him later), and the birds. All the birds. My neighbor was feeding them and there were so many different ones. I thoroughly enjoy listening to them while out in my yard. I would hear a crow or two, but they didn’t really come into our yards. I looked up how to attract crows to your yard and began feeding them.
I started with bits dry cat food and peanuts I put in a bowl on the awning. But that damn squirrel™ kept knocking it down and eating it all.

Then, I started leaving food out on the garage roof, and calling to the the crows when I would leave the food, so they would associate my voice with treats. I would call out “Pretty bird” in my best bird friend voice. Low and behold slowly a crow began to frequent my yard. At first it was just the one noisy one and it looked like he would just grab the treats and bring them back to his nest. Then I started seeing two crows come by, the one noisy one would caw and sort of command the other one to get “her” share first, then he would get his own.

One day he came to visit and just stayed there while I was puttering in my garden. I talked to him and told him about my garden and he seemed to just listen, like he knew what I was saying. I was so excited to have made a friend. He came around a lot when I was in my yard. I continued to feed him through the winter. A few times I would see him flying above my car when I was driving into my neighborhood and to my driveway, and he would sit on the line while I ran inside to get him some treats.

Then spring sprung and my crow friend and his “wife” came ‘round again, but this time they brought their babies! I was so proud that they thought enough of me to show me their babies. I got to watch the babies grow all spring and into the summer.

I had my very own murder of crows!

Now, it was the second (technically third) summer with my crow friend and his family. I got a text message from my neighbor while I was at work saying my crow was in the yard. This was strange since he usually just stayed on the power line or on my garage roof. She sent me a picture - he was just laying there and barely moving. She thought he might be sick. I immediately called my husband to go out and check on him. He said the crow wasn’t moving much and looked sick. He tried to feed him some water, or some treats I kept for them. My little crow friend wouldn’t eat or drink. Finally, my husband said he needed help and offered to take him to the local wildlife place, I could meet him there after work. On the drive there, my husband said he was talking to the bird like he’d seen me do, and he felt like the bird said his name was “Jake”. So My Friend Crow was actually Jake.

The rest isn’t as fun - Jake did not make it. The wildlife place told us he had contracted bird flu. I was completely heart broken. I lost my friend. I had to be the one to tell his family. I was so worried that they would think that because we were the ones that took him away, they would blame us for his death.

But they did not. In fact they all came the next morning to have breakfast and I told them we did everything we could but Jake was now at peace. There were 7 crows sitting on my power line that morning.

It’s now been 4 years and I keep feeding them as often as I can. None of them hang out in the yard with me like Jake did. Maybe someday one of them will. But in the meantime I keep leaving treats for them and they caw and let me know that they are still there.

I named one of my scents after Jake, My Friend Crow.