Keep Portland Weird—It’s working!

As I started trying to write a tribute to my odd encounters downtown and via Tri-Met, it ended up being a lot longer than I expected, and so I think I am breaking it into three parts.

I am pretty comfortable with stretching a topic over multiple days, but there is a different peril with this topic, in that I worry that I will come off as a jerk. I’m going for it anyway for a couple of reasons. One is that in relaying these stories to a coworker, she said “Now that’s the kind of stuff that you should be blogging about!” Of course, just reading it you are missing the voices and gestures that I use to act them out, but the fact that I relay these stories to friends and family at all means that if this is jerky, I am a jerk, whether I blog about it or not, so you might as well get your crack at them.

There is just one story for today, and no public transportation was involved. I had gone outside to eat my lunch, so I was sitting on a bench in Pettygrove Park. I love crows, and there was one nearby, so I started tossing him small bits of my sandwich, keeping them fairly close. We were getting along pretty well—I wasn’t going to start petting him or anything, but it was amicable. A woman approached us, and in a heavy Eastern-European accent she said “I have never seen one get so close.”

I was a little embarrassed because I know it’s the food—I’m not the crow whisperer. So I admitted somewhat sheepishly, “I’ve been feeding him.” I realize now she thought I meant that this was a regular thing, not something that had been happening for about fifteen minutes. Anyway, still looking spellbound, she said “He’s almost tame.” There was a slight pause, and suddenly she said “Caw! Caw!”

So that’s the second time this year that I have seen a—well, let’s call it a what-the-heck face on a bird. The first time was in Mexico. Maria was trying to pose with a macaw, and every time she was ready for the shot the macaw would squawk, startle her, and ruin the shot. I admit it seemed a little too deliberate to be completely coincidental, but I still do not approve of the way in which she expressed her displeasure, which was belching at it. Incidentally, although crows and parrots are very different in structure and appearance, their what-the-heck faces are pretty similar.

Anyway, the crow hopped up to the back of the bench, and I think he would have flown away if there hadn’t still been a piece of food on the ground. He was not giving up that sandwich! I guess she realized he was not going to engage, and so she left, and my lunch was almost over anyway, but the crow did retrieve the morsel before I walked away, so I guess we were all good.

I’m going to just go ahead and sound a little weird myself here: If you want to communicate with animals either speak your own language or just communicate telepathically. Even if you are skilled at making animal sounds, what are you telling them? Bird calls are usually about declaring territory or sounding alarms or mating calls, none of which would be appropriate. They don’t have a call for “How about those Blazers?”

Obviously that’s different for domestic animals who spend a lot of time around us. Dogs can learn several words, with some estimating that the average trained dog knows 160 words. Cats could probably learn several, though they’ll never admit it. It’s a different relationship. But when I’m walking down the street and greeting nearby birds, I just say “Hi”, and sometimes with small mammals I will just send out positive vibes.