The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-03-08
A PARADISE FOR CROWS.
Ashmore's Grove, ILL.,, Where Farmers
Coax Crows to Stay.

Ashmore's Grove, ILL.,, Where Farmers
Coax Crows to Stay,
I'm from Ashmore's Grove, ILL.,"
said a man who looked it, the only
place ON the footstool where they coax
and beg crows to stay, and are all put
out if they don't Seems queer don't
it? But it's a fact Ashmore's Grove
is the paradise of crows.
TWENTY-FIVE years ago we scarcely
knew what a crow was out around Ash
mores Grove but one season about
that time crows began to light down
among us until we began to think they
had left every other spot on the face of
the earth and came to live at Ashmore's
Grove. There seemed to be no end to
their coming in. They parcelled out
among themselves every piece of woods
there was for miles around. Near as I
could calculate, and I'm pretty good at
figures, there wasn't a crow less than
nine hundred thousand in that colony
not a one Winged marauders, old
Parson Whelpley called EN-, sent on us
for our sins, though there wasn't fid-
die in the whole settlement, and if
you'd a-come along that way just then
and wanted to play social game of
whistle jack ! don't believe you could
have drummed up man to take a
hand with you.
But there was them crows. It's rich
prairie land at Ashmores Grove, and
we don't brag a bit over sixty bushels
of corn to the acre. Naturally enough
everyone of us believed that this big
army of crows had just heard of that
garden spot of the earth, and had come
down upon it to devastate it, so men,
women and children dropped all else
they had to do and started in on cam
paign against them crows We hunted
them in their roosts, we trapped EN-
we poisoned 'em, we pursued 'em with
fire. We burned up whole tracts of
good timber where the crows roasted,
and roasted thousands of 'em every
night. For weeks the air was thick
with the smell of burning crow, and we
filled a deep trench half mile long al
most, burying shot and trapped and
poisoned crows. But still survivors by
the thousand fingered with us and
swarmed in our fields.
Then, to top it ALL we took to MOTTO
ing that we had another cheerful visi-
w aiming us' his =" do d 8 up 'ile1I
not only cheWed UP the ROOFS or the
young corn, winch, somehow or other,
came up all right IN spite OF the crows,
put 1t prayed mob with the blue grass.
Ihe farmers got to hoWnng that the
plaques of Egypt We're like as not COM
ing on EN-, and Parson Whelpley said
It wouldn't surprise him blt-and We
always paid the parson In advance, too.
we seemed to think the crows were
there to leave ruin and famine In their
wake, and so we shot and tramped and
poisoned and burned EN-; and the
grub kept right on getting in its work
on our corn and grass and we never
turned hand against him. Next sea-
son the crow colony wasn't half as big
as it had been before. We kept bang
ing and blazing away at 'em year by
year, until at last you wouldn't see
flock in half a days walk. All this
time the yield Of corn per, acre had
gradually decreased all the while, and
we cussed the crow for having ruined
us. The grub was still at work, but the
farmers had no idea that they were not
ablo ~ handle hin, oil ,iobt now tbat