The best fed raven on Gabriola

We’ve been outsmarted again! This time by a raven. We may think he’s become our “pet” over the last few years but, in fact, he’s made a pet of us. He’s trained us well. Whenever he peers at us through the window from his perch on the deck railing or swoops past my husband’s basement office to get his attention, one of us will dash to the fridge where we keep a large glass dish full of meat, poultry and fish scraps labelled “Raven,” open the patio door to tell him we’re on our way and then carry his meal to his feeding stumps at the back end of the property, under his watchful beady black eye. As soon as we are a safe distance away, he swoops in for his meal. He is big and sleek, and so well fed that he sometimes seems almost too heavy to fly.

Lately, my husband has become too lazy to walk all the way to the stumps and will put the raven’s dish on the deck where we have a “birds’ eye” view of how neatly he eats and how carefully he stacks pieces of food before flying off to his nest. (In past years, when we’d put out saltine crackers, we would marvel at how he skillfully he would stack them in fours, carefully aligning the corners before flying off with them in his beak.) He will return multiple times to clear out the dish, either to feed himself on the spot, carry bits back to the nest or cache pieces in the leaf litter on our neighbour’s roof, in our woodchip pile or even in the ground.

About a month ago, my daughter noticed that the raven’s chest had large bald spots. She was afraid he was ill, but I assured her that he was merely “feathering his nest.” We’re sure he has chicks because he returns multiple times a day for a snack, sometimes calling his mate to join him. It’s hard to keep up with just scraps so my husband has begun cooking specifically to keep the raven’s dish full. Our kitchen often stinks of frying chicken hearts, gizzards and livers or beef hearts. I think it’s ridiculous to cook for a raven, but I suppose it’s better not to be caught short since he is impossible to ignore. In a pinch, he’ll settle for dry cat food (which we feed to the raccoons, more fools us!), which he eats daintily out of a stainless steel bowl affixed to the porch railing, picking out the square ones first, which, like the raccoons, he prefers, but you can tell that he’s hoping for something more substantial.

The big surprise was how much he loved my husband’s ham mac and cheese (he uses rotini, but let’s not quibble). My husband was so thrilled with the raven’s reaction to his homemade comfort food recipe that he whipped up a second batch the next day just for the raven, this time cooking the pasta al dente so the raven would have less trouble stacking the pieces! My husband left the dish on the deck and sat nearby to watch. The raven got so excited that he began jumping up and down and vocalizing to my husband, something he had never done before. (My daughter has been trying without success to teach the raven to say “hi,” but he rarely talks to us beyond a single croak if we don’t respond quickly enough.) It was hard to tell who enjoyed the experience more.

The close relationship we’ve developed with the animals on our small property – the deer, the raccoons, the birds – has become a big part of our social life. Their antics and intelligence are a constant source of wonder and pleasure.