The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-09-20
A CROW PARADISE.
The Black Birds Are Welcome Resi-
dents Of This Community

I'm from Ashmore's Grove, Ill.,"
said man who looked it, 1.-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
Grove Is the paradise of crows
Twenty-Five years ago we scarcely
knew what q crow was out around
Ashmore's Grove, but one season about
that time crows began to light down
among US until we begun to think they
had left every other spot ON the face
Of the earth and come to live at Ash
more's Grove. There seemed to be no
end to their coming in. They parceled
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 100000 in that colony
not one. Winged marauders, old Par
son Whelpley called 'em, sent on us for
our sins, though there wasn't a fiddle
In the whole settlement, and if you'd a
come along that way just then and
wanted to play social game of whis-
tie jack l don't believe you could have
drummed UP man to take hand
with you.
But there was them crows. It's rich
prairie land at Ashmore's Grove, and we
don't brag bit over sixty bushels of
one of us believed that this big army
of crows had just heard of that gar
den 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 a
campaign against them crows. We
hunted EN-, we poisoned 'em, we pur-
sued '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 deep trench half a
mile long almost, burying shot and
trapped and poisoned crows. But stin
survivors by the thousand fingered With
US and swarmed in our fields.
Then, to top it ALL we took to noticing
that we had another cheerful visitor among
us. This was grub that not only chewed
up the roots of the young corn, which some
how or another came up in spite of the
crows, but it played hob with the blue grass.
The farmers got to bowling that the plaques
of Egypt were like not coming on EN-,
and Parson Whe!pley said it wouldn't sur
prise him bit, and we always paid the par
son in advance, too.
"Wc seemed to think the crows were there
to leave ruin and famine in their wake and
so we shot and trapped and poisoned and
burned them, and the grab kept right
getting in its work corn and grass
and we never turned a hand against him.
Next season the crow colony wasn't half as
big as 1t had been before. We kept banging
and blazing away at EN- year by year until
at last you wouldn't see a 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 farmer
had no idea that they were not able to handle
him all right now that they had got rid of
the crows. But the first season the crows
failed to appear the corn crop was smaller
than 1t had ever been. The grub increased
in numbers. The corn crop kept on turning
up lip and lip until ten bushels to the
was as big yield as that rich prairie bottom
would consent to give. and the crows hadn't
been permitted to come back, either-not a
blamed crow.
.'Then the farmers that had made UP their
minds to think made them up further, that
they had actually thought, and they almost
drove Parson Whelpley to -reSigning by de-
claring that they believed that the reason
the crows had come among US so suddenly
and thick few years before was that
they had simply followed in the wake of the
grubs and had come to feed upon the ire
like kicking itself out of the state. And
what did it do but go straight to work to try
to get the crows 1t hadn't shot. trapped,
poisoned and put to the torch to come back
again. We heard they had gone Gear to the
Wabash country, and we actually hired men
and sent 'em over there to trap crows and
fetch 'em to Ashmore's Grove TO stock our
woods up with 'em. These crows, finding
everything pleasant there. settled down with
u.s. and you bet we treated 'em white. We
had to tell Parson Whelpey, though, that
If he didn't like 1t to go. He stayed News
of the situation was carried by our crows to-
other crow colonies, and in few weeks we
had more crows among us than we had
seen in years. We gave notice that any
caught killing crow would have to hunt
other quarters. The next season something
like the old-time colony came focking in,
and that fall we gathered the biggest crop
of corn we had raised in five years. We
actually petted them crows and nothing was
too good for them. And they forgot and
forgave, and kept heaping Goals of fire ON
our heads to such an extent that in four
years that prairie turning out sixty
bushels of corn to the acre again, and the
blue grass was back to its old-time yield"