Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Not all heroes wear capes.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

T R E 4 5 O N

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Let there be snark.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

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Reader Interactions

83Comments

  1. 1.

    quakerinabasement

    I missed that you were trying to attract squirrels. I’d be happy to send you the bunch that keep stealing my apples.

  2. 2.

    Spanky

    Uh, yeah. Yeah. Bad commenters! You go for it, John! Just make sure you take pictures/video of the results.

  4. 4.

    hells littlest angel

    I think attracting crows is a great idea. Try leaving a few dead bodies scattered around your property.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    Agreed. You won’t learn until a crow pecks out your eyeball.  Then we’ll all have a good laugh about it.

  8. 8.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    John replying to me on Twitter about Crows made my day (I’ve had a boring day).  I still find crows to be nothing but obnoxious.

  11. 11.

    Suzanne

    Don’t plant the willow close to the house!

    In all seriousness, crows are awesome and I approve of the plan

    Also, side note: looking at Princes William and Harry separated by their cousin Peter Phillips, I am struck by how much hotter Peter Phillips is than either of them.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    Telling me it is a bad idea only encourages me.

    Lingering artifact from your R-side days?

    :)

  13. 13.

    MagdaInBlack

    You do what’s right for you, John. Crows it is ! I look forward to the pictures and stories ?

  14. 14.

    Lige

    We should trade yards I have plenty of both!  I like them  but they tend to interfere with my wife’s gardening.  The crows really seem to have a thing against the little plastic tabs you use to identify what you’ve planted and are continually pulling them out.

  17. 17.

    Catherine D.

    Hey, I love crows. We’d be neck deep in road kill without. And I talk to the ones who hang out in my yard. We get along very well.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    I am offering free crows. Many, many free crows. Just say yes. They have California accents.​
    ETA also have a backyard willow, so there’s that. It does wonderfully, drinking directly from the sewer main. Just ask the city.

  19. 19.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Hey, I encourage people to buy guitars.  I will tell anyone that they will have no problem skiing that black run. I am an enthusiastic bad influence.  So I say, get as many crows as you can.  You have to be crazy not to.

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    Don’t settle for halfway measures – get a turkey buzzard call.

    “Make sure to tell the new kid we don’t go trick or treating at that house. Nuh-uh. No way.”
    :)

  22. 22.

    mrmoshpotato

    @trollhattan:

    ETA also have a backyard willow, so there’s that. It does wonderfully, drinking directly from the sewer main. Just ask the city. 

    Hehe, roots.

  23. 23.

    Ella in New Mexico

    We have about 500 nuisance White Winged Doves living in the trees in our backyard that cover everything below where they’re roosting in purple bird shit that I’d LOVE to find a way to get rid of…may be John would be interested in a humane relocation project?

    Added Benefits:

    1. 500 birds singing “who cooks for you?” all damn day long until you scream STFU at the top of your lungs

    2. cats can’t get enough of their dumb-yet-tender morsel-asses  so you have a daily explosion of feathers to clean up

    3. They also randomly fly headfirst into your bedroom window jerking you awake at 7 am

  25. 25.

    Albatrossity

    Should be fun! But the timing might be off. The large winter flocks of crows are breaking up, and pairs of crows are scouting for nest sites right now. Maybe you can attract a rowdy bunch of young incel crows!

    Please keep us posted!

  26. 26.

    karen marie

    @Suzanne:   I don’t know if it’s true but I read on twitter that the reason Phillips was between Harry and William is protocol – Phillips is the first-born of the three.

  27. 27.

    JMG

    Our neighborhood on the Cape has many many crows, and they are attracted to a dead Cape oak tree in our back yard (really the tree line separating about three lots). Looks spooky as hell when they use it as a hang out.

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax:

    We had a turkey buzzard sitting on the peak of our roof when we got back from a walk the other day. It was not a pleasant sight.

  29. 29.

    Nice Marmot

    You are not going to regret this project…crows are so smart (“the primates of the bird world”) and interesting.

    A neighbour here in Vancouver (Canada) used to walk her dog a few blocks to buy a paper at the store, and a crow would follow them along, wait for her to come out of the store, and follow them back to our building.

    I “meditate” (Rastafarian-style) for an hour each day in the woods right outside our place, and the crows, especially this time of year, are a great part of the forest.

    Enjoy!!

  30. 30.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Adam Lang: Yes! On the rare occasion we’ve had crows come into the yard they aggressively chase them off and we literally cheer them on

    Crows > Cats when it comes to doves

  31. 31.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @trollhattan: The entire West would gladly trade our nuisance birds and invasive plants for just half the massive rainstorms  that will hit our friends back east who think the former are so cool

  32. 32.

    Morzer

    Of course, all the real corvid hipsters have moved on to magpies.  Trust John to go aggressively retro in his pursuit of coolness.  Joking aside, Seoul seems to have the largest population of magpies (and azure-winged magpies) in the world. Not many crows at all.

  33. 33.

    JMG

    The one drawback to crows is that they fight off the hawks (they’re bitter enemies) that keep the rabbit population down in our neck of the woods. So vegetable gardeners don’t care for them.

  34. 34.

    Suzanne

    @karen marie: That sounds plausible.

    All I know is that that family really needs commoner DNA. The purebred ones are ugly AF. When they marry outsiders, the kids are way hotter. William is gross-looking now.

  35. 35.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @raven: 
    Do you know this because you’re in actuality a sapient raven that uses your beak to tap on the keys of a keyboard? ?

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @Nice Marmot: You are not going to regret this project…crows are so smart (“the primates of the bird world”) and interesting.

    But are they trainable?  Could a person — hypothetically, you understand — teach them to do his bidding, so he could stand on his front porch cackling and shouting “Fly, my pretties!” as the murder flaps and caws overhead toward its latest victim?

  39. 39.

    Gvg

    I have quite a few crows, for reasons unknown. They find stale bread and large dog biscuits somewhere, and leave them soaking in my bird baths, which I don’t really care for. They poop on the deck, not amazingly bad, just part of homeownership. They also plant peanuts which then come up in odd places in my yard. I find that mildly funny. Not terrible aggravations, but not that interesting or attractive as birds go, IMO.

    i haven’t noticed fewer squirrels than other houses. Florida has a lot of squirrels. So crows do not scare away squirrels. I would like to have fewer squirrels but nobody has ever managed that in Florida. Even hawks are just temporary. So I buy the more expensive bird feeders and baffles and try to cultivate patience.

  41. 41.

    moops

    You know how you have other birds in your area and how some of them nest in your yard and about your home? Yeah, when crows show up that all ends. Crows in urban and suburban habitats do not coexist with other birds. They eat them or drive them out. They also fail to fill all the niches in your local ecosystem that your former birds fulfilled. The only reliable predator in these ecosystems are raccoons and owls. Maybe you have enough of those in your area to manage your growing murder.

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    John, we like that you are opposite man.

    That trying to talk you off the ledge only encourages you to step closer and closer.

    Now the part that should be scary for you is that many may have recognized that in you and we are actually encouraging you with reverse logic, and not trying to talk you off the ledge.

    Have you learned nothing about us through all these years?

  44. 44.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Ken:

    teach them to do his bidding, so he could stand on his front porch cackling and shouting “Fly, my pretties!” as the murder flaps and caws overhead toward its latest victim?

    LOL! I’ve always wanted to own a parakeet or a parrot because it would be so cool to have it repeat what you say

  46. 46.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Ruckus: I’m of the ” do what you want, you know you will anyway” school of thought. I think that applies well to John.

    Probably just as well I’m not a parent ?

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I knew a fella who owned a parrot.

    Sat on his shoulder every where he went.

    Nice runs of parrot shit all down the front/back of his shirt.

    Did keep a lot of people from getting too close to him though.

  48. 48.

    bcw

    Mixed feelings, circle of life and all that. Last year I had a Robin build a nest on an air conditioner under an eave right outside my window. I watched the eggs become chicks and grow to tennis ball size and start to flap their wings a bit before hearing a very angry Robin one morning and looking out to see a crow tearing over the lawn. The Robin squawked for an hour but the nest was empty. It turns out about 1/3 of crow’s diet is the young of other birds. I think this crow was just waiting for the young to reach lunch size.​
    ​
    ​

  52. 52.

    JustRuss

    I would say “Fine, but don’t come around here bitching when your crow experiment goes sideways,” except you own the damn blog.  Oh well, at least it will be entertaining.

    Maybe we can start a pool for when the first “Turns out this might not have been a great idea” post appears.

  56. 56.

    Josie

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ​
     I used to have a cockatiel who said “Woodstock’s a pretty bird” (his name) and ” Get that cat out of here!” (a favorite line from a Steve Martin movie). The funny thing was that when I moved him to the outdoor aviary, many of the mockingbirds picked up his vocabulary.

  57. 57.

    feebog

    I have a bad feeling about this.  They don’t call it a “murder” of crows for nothing ya know.

  58. 58.

    Morzer

    @feebog: Steve is never going to move fast enough to catch a crow when it’s so much easier to pin Cole down and demand breakfast with menaces.

  62. 62.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Go ahead. Heck, if I could I would send you twenty or so from the murder that hangs out in our part of town. They love to find an unfortunate bird and harass it to death. If they’re within a half mile of us we can hear them every time they launch another attack. I was constantly picking up the poor targets feathers from our back yard up to when our tree was removed.

    As was requested above, please record the results. Hell, stream it on Twitch!

  64. 64.

    Miss Bianca

    @Morzer: I have a video of my late beloved Luna as a puppy, being decorously mobbed by a couple of magpies who would wait for her to come out onto the lawn of the apartment building where I was living at the time. They thought it was HIGH-larious to bounce up on her from behind and peck at her tail and then bounce away again before she could get at them, yakking it up all the way. It was high-larious, too, particularly as she merely got up and trotted away from the indignity.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @schrodingers_cat: That’s a fascinating tidbit of information. Is it then up to the dead person’s heirs to figure out what might have weighing on his or her mind?

    (I could see that being a great premise for a mystery novel!)

  68. 68.

    Ken

    @JustRuss: Maybe we can start a pool for when the first “Turns out this might not have been a great idea” post appears.

    Given the number of comments about “wish I could send you some of the noisy ones near me”, I’ll say when the Fedex fleet shows up outside John’s door with 800 boxes, all stamped “LIVE ANIMALS”.

  69. 69.

    Uncle Omar

    I certainly wouldn’t want to dissuade you from this project, but it might be best to consult your feline master before going forward.

  71. 71.

    Benw

    Dude, listen, shaving your hair into a giant purple mohawk and going on tour with a punk band is a TERRIBLE idea and you should know better

  73. 73.

    randal m sexton

    ‘random guy on the internet who reccomended padrons ‘ (me) — I have been making friends with the local crows for the last 1.5 years or so, since covid.  I just leave peanuts out, on a fence rail and they love them. They seem to prefer the ones with shells on them.  Salted, – cuz I like to eat them too –   My garden is right near by, and they have not done any damage to the garden.   Speaking of padrons, I just bought a bunch of them from summerwinds (local bay palo alto nursery) and they look suspiciously like something other than padrons.   We will see. My Spanish wife/father in law may get upset.

  74. 74.

    billcinsd

    Well believe me, Mike, I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid… and I went ahead anyway.

     

    John “Crow T. Robot” Cole

  75. 75.

    p.a.

    If he could figure out and bottle what makes his yard squirrel-proof, he could retire a millionaire while financing multiple animal rescue locations.

  76. 76.

    Ohio Mom

    In my mind’s eye I see that visual meme of the young fellow walking down a crowded street with his girl, you know the one, his head is turned to ogle a passing young woman and his girl is furious.

    Except the young fellow is Cole, he’s ogling a crow, and looking at him aghast are the parent songbirds who return to his front porch every year.

  77. 77.

    Morzer

    I just hope this doesn’t end with the vanishing of the Cole tribe and the only clue being a cat-scratched note on a tree saying “Crowatoan”.

  79. 79.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @BeautifulPlumage: I’m glad someone did lol

    I’ve been told I’m allowed to shoot them with pellet guns but I can’t bring myself to do that. And I angry-cry any time one of my four feline monsters catches one of the babies that fell of of the nest while cursing their parents for choosing such a dangerous neighborhood to raise their children in

    I just wish they’d go the far, far fuck away

  80. 80.

    Another Scott

    @Ella in New Mexico: A few years ago, a mourning dove started trying to build a nest on top of the mailbox mounted on the siding by our front door.  The rounded-roof metal box that people visit nearly every day…  It got a couple of sticks to stay eventually before giving up, but I wondered what was going on in its tiny brain to start there in the first place…

    :-)

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  81. 81.

    Nice Marmot

    @Ken: Crows have highly developed problem solving skills, and It’s going to be fun hearing about the relationship John is about to get into! As for “training”, eh, that’s a two-way street…

  82. 82.

    Geo Wilcox

    @Baud: Or when his garden  is ransacked by them. Or he faces complaints from the neighbors and they hang fake owls and shiny strips of foil every where to get rid of them.

  83. 83.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    @Ken: There are people who have been training crows to pick up litter for food using a crow-friendly vending machine, so Maybe?

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