In Canyonlands, the ravens have learned to associate people with easy access to food. They will tear open bags and people claim some of them can actually open zippers. At the pullout at the end of the Needles pavement they happily jump onto cars. In fact, the Idiots saw one go into a car through a partially-open window and the owners had to chase it away to prevent total devastation of their granola bar stash.
Sometimes an Idiot will behave... well... let's just say "less than clever."
Idiot He returned from a short hike to witness what might have been an out-take from Hitchcock's "The Birds." First a raven eyed the RV. Then there were two. Then one moved closer to the open door. Then the two got ever closer to entering the RV.
Since He had read the warnings posted in the campground restroom, He mentally noted "Only an Idiot would be feeding the ravens..." Then it came to him that She had NOT read the warnings...
The ranger very kindly informed the contrite Idiot that feeding the ravens is a very bad idea...
but they are SO interesting to see close up!
Idiot She need not have worried - closer encounters still were coming.
Ravens play a major role in many cultural traditions. The Greeks associated ravens with Apollo and prophecies. Ravens are mentioned in the Talmud and both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In Germanic mythology, the all-father god Odin has two ravens who go out each day to gather information for him - their names translate as "Thought" and "Memory." The Irish and Welsh have central raven myths, and the English have built a whole series of traditions around the ravens that reside in the Tower of London.
Perhaps the richest raven myths come to us from Native-Americans. The raven is depicted two different ways - as a creator god and as a trickster god. In one aspect, the Raven brought light into the darkness and created the world in which we currently live. In the other aspect, the raven resembles the coyote... a tricky, but greedy character that often puts one over on other gods and animals but eventually usually loses due to being to greedy and childish.
In much of Western tradition, ravens are bad omens... associated with death. Shakespeare mentions ravens more often than any other bird - usually to tell us doom and despair are about to enter, stage left. And, of course, the bird got a pretty bad rap from that eternal optimist, Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote an extended paranoid delusion about a raven that visited his narrator (maybe) that ends
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
English has a group of words called "collective nouns." Words like herd, pod, school, flock... are used to describe a group of a particular animal. The Idiots have always been puzzled by a "Shrewdness" of apes. Scientists call ravens "corvids" along with their close relatives, the crows, jays, magpies and associates. But popular culture has determined that a group of crows is called a "Murder" and a group of ravens is an "Unkindness" - or alternatively, a "Conspiracy."
Bad press, indeed... but the Idiots think of ravens a little differently. Ravens are certainly among the smartest birds. They are also loving and protective of their young. They also play... they do acobatic flying and engage in teasing behaviors with other ravens and with other animals. They are alternately fierce and funny. One can see them as harbingers of death - or one can think of them as more like angels, with their lively interactions and scavenging of corpses making them function as mediators between the living and the dead.
Whatever one thinks of ravens - they certainly are pretty birds. The Idiots got to observe closely a human-raven exchange... and then a third species enterred the picture and natural instincts flared!
