Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1890-12-27
COOP WOOD soa TIE crow.


He II . mighty Cute Bird. and II Isnst
Easy - Fool Him.
Farmer Lucius 8. Clark, Of North Abing-
ton township, is a great friend Of Crows
He declares that the noisy, big birds do .
great deal more good than harm on his
place, and he never allows his SONS to rob
their nests, or TO shoot or trsp them. Gen.
seQuently AL the crows that net in Farmer
Clark's woods every summer, and sail over
his broad acres at all seasons Of the year,
are much tanner than thoae that flock on
the farms Of some Of his neighbors. Even
though he ID kind 20 his big family of
crows, Farmer Clark says that the black
rascals have until this season been In the
habit Of scratching up lots of his corn as
soon as it was planted, and of pulling up
lots more shortly after it had become nicely
sprouted. But the cutworms and other
crawling things that the crows devoured,
more than paid for the damage they did to
the corn. and that was why he cherished
the glossy birds, he said.
When corn planting time came Farmer
Clark thought be would see IL he couldn't
make the crows let the corn alone after it
had been planted. He boiled lot of tar
in large kettle. dumped his seed corn
into it and kept stirring the mass until
coating of tar. and after that he relied the
corn in pulverized lime till it was white.
He planted it the same day, and the crows
clawed few hills of it up and were in a
peck Of trouble for several hours. The
summing fellows evidently couldn't make
1ut what the COMPOUNDED stuff was, for
hey dropped the kernels as though they
were red hot bits OF metal and then flew to
another part of the field and tried other
bills.
The corn didn't taste right to any of the
crows, and after they had sampled hills
here and there the whole flock met at a
back corner Of the lot and had noisy dis
cussion over the mystery. In the course
OF half an hour one of the crows sailed
away, alighted on hill. scratched into it
and suddenly started back to where its
companions were sitting silently on the
fence, yelling ont the information on the
way that itwas the same nasty stuff as the
rest. Then the whole flock jawed as tight
as they could for minute or so, when
anotfer crow sailed forth to different sec
ton OF the field. tackled a hill, took ker-
mel in it's bill, elected it mighty quick and
flew over to the fence with the same dis
gushing report. For two hours the crows
took turns at investigating, finally came
to the conclusion that they had been un-
mercifully fooled and went cawing away
to the woods ON the hillside. Farmer
Clark had watched them all the time. and
he declared that the crows let that field en-
tirely alone from thenon.
In another patch the men planted two
rows with corn that had not been coated
with tar and lime. The rows were ten
rods apart, and the cunning crows I'M
earthed every hill in each row and gobbled
up every kernel of corn, but they didn't
touch a single hill of the intervening rows.
where the tarred corn was Farmer Clark
said that their eye teeth had been cut in
the former field, and that the birds were
too sharp to be led into the same painful
experience again. Plain corn was planted
in the two rows the second time, and the
crows scratched it all up the next day.
Then the men put beans in the corn hills.
and the beans were not disturbed by the
black rascals.
Another strange thing about the be-
havior of Farmer Clark's flock of crows
was noticed by the watchful farmer when
the cultivator was run between the rows
of corn for the first time In the latter
field dozens OF crows followed the cultiya-
tor and picked up hundreds of cutworms.
When the farm hand turned his horse
about the flock rose up and flew TO the
fence but as soon as he got well started on
his way TO the other end of the lot they
settled down n few rods behind him and
resumed their work-Scranton Pa. Cor.
New York Sun.