Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-04-13
DYNAMITE FOR CROWS.
Effect Of Two Cartridges Exploded In q
Convention of Black Fellows.

| 81 don't suppose so many crows were
| ever slaughtered in the same length of
time as saw killed out in Colorado this
winter" said a Scranton traveller, who had
Just returned from a two months tour in
the Far West. :" stopped two weeks
with an old schoolmate in Colorado, and
the second day | was there he told me he
was going to show ME something novel
that afternoon. Four miles from his res
idence he had quarry and in the quarry
worked a number of men who knew how
to handle dynamite. In barren ridge
| about three furlongs from the quarry hun
| dreds of crows met and quarreled and
| fought every afternoon, and their racket
made some of the workmen in the quarry
mad. My host had heard the men find
| fault so many times with the crows that
i he had set himself to work to contrive a
| plan for silencing them, and he told me
that he had perfected his scheme on the
previous day, and got everything ready for
execution. So that afternoon he hitched
up and we drove out to the quarry. Then
he explained it all to me.
From the top of the ridge where the
crows were in the habit of assembling he
! had ordered the men to string a wire
the ground to spot opposite to the open
ing of the quarry. There were two
branches to the wire on the ridge, and at
the end of each branch there was dyna-
mite cartridge larger than candle. Near
the quarry there was little battery, and
my friend told me that his plan was to
have one of the dynamiters work the bat
terry as soon as the crows got thick on the
ridge. He took two good tield-glasses
along, and through them we were to watch
the explosion and its effects on the crows
| We took our position on knoll at
least three-quarters of mile from the
ridge, and in plain sight of the dynamiter
that person Being instructed to touch the
battery button when he saw my friend
wave a white handkerchief. About 5
o'clock the crows began to settle down on
the ridge all around where my friend said
the cartridges lay. They came from every
point of the compass, and the din they
made was heard plainly enough where we
were. They cawed and futtered and
hoped over one another, and in fifteen
minutes the ridge was mass of moving
black wings and bodies. / was watching
them through the powerful glass that my
| friend had lent me, and he was making
! observations, too, and we were talking to
one another about how the crows would be
apt to feel when the dynamite went off
among them.
"After while he said: Keep good
watch now, Pm going to give the signal
and in less than half minute there was a
quick, dull explosion that Jared the
ground little where we sat, and the air
| on the ridge for rods around anDeared tn
be filed with small black particles
that looked more like a swarm of
gnats or flies than anything else.
The cloud was mixed with dust
and other brown particles, and when
the mass settled we couldn't see single
crow either on the ridge or in the sky any
where around. i guess it was success
my host exclaimed gleefully, and now
we'll go over to the spot and see what
effect the explosion had on the crows
$50 we hurried down the side of the
knoll. and ran across a little flat to the
foot of the ridge, where we began to find
crows bills, legs, claws, whole heads, tails
and wing feathers, and other evidences
of the remarkable havoc made by the
two cartridges. There must have been
all of 200 crows on the ridge when the
dynamite exploded, but we couldn't find a
whole crow anywhere. 1t had killed every
one Of them and scattered their remains
over large territory, and, up to the time
my visit came TO an end, the workmen re-
ported to my host that they hadn't seen or
heard a solitary crow within a mile of
where the dynamite had got in its deadly
work on the flock of black futterers."-