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You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Make The World A Better Place / Betty’s Wish Cannot Be Ignored

Betty’s Wish Cannot Be Ignored

by TaMara|  February 13, 20235:39 pm| 21 Comments

This post is in: Make The World A Better Place, Pet Blogging, I Will Cut You If You Muddy This Thread

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I have some stuff stashed just for emergencies like this.

CCKids sent me this and absolutely made my day last week:

Friendly, foul-mouthed crow befriends entire Oregon elementary school before state police are called in

A crow

Cosmo the talking crow, in a hat made by Daphnie Colpron.

By Lizzy Acker | The Oregonian/OregonLive
A friendly, if somewhat foul-mouthed, crow became a temporary mascot at Allen Dale Elementary School in November when the bird took up residence at the Grants Pass school.

“This crow showed up at our school just out of the blue one morning,” said Naomi Imel, an education assistant at Allen Dale, over the phone on Thursday.

It began looking into classrooms, Imel said, and pecking on doors. At one point, it made its way into a fifth-grade classroom where it “helped itself to some snacks,” she said.

Imel said the bird wasn’t aggressive at all and seemed to love the kids.

“It landed on some people’s heads,” she said.

And, she added, it spoke. The bird could say, “What’s up?” and “I’m fine” and “a lot of swear words.”

“It was like a parrot,” Imel said. “It was the weirdest thing.”

Still, because it was a wild animal that wouldn’t leave, the school called animal control.

“It was quite the production,” Imel said. “Animal control came out and decided it was not in their jurisdiction to catch the crow.”

Then, a wildlife officer from Oregon State Police came to the scene.

“That officer was able to feed it from his hand,” Imel said. “They didn’t want to net it because if they missed, it would remember.”

According to Imel, all the grades came out to witness the attempted capture of the talkative crow.

The crow seemed to enjoy the attention, playfully chasing kids around the track, she said.

“We thought it would fly away but it didn’t,” Imel added. “The kids were like magnets.”

Ultimately, the wildlife trooper was unable to capture the crow, who spent the night of Nov. 29 outside the school.

It turns out, talking crows aren’t just something out of an Edgar Allan Poe poem. And this crow, or possibly and more in line with Poe, raven, knows at least 40 words.

“He knows a lot of words, I’m not going to lie,” said Daphnie Colpron on Thursday. “His vocabulary has expanded quite a bit in the last few weeks.”

Colpron knows a good deal about the crow, or possibly, raven — who also may be female — because her mother rescued the bird about two years ago when it was a baby, bringing it home to the family’s farm in Williams from a shelter and naming it “Cosmo.”

The family has dogs, including a mastiff named “Tonka Truck,” Colpron said.

“Cosmo will say, ‘Tonka, you come outside,’ or he’ll say, ‘Dogs out,’” she said.

“Sometimes he does use profanity,” Colpron added.

Colpron’s mom, JaNeal Shattuck, considers Cosmo part of the family.

In the mornings, she said, “he will go right to my bedroom window and say, ‘Mom wake up, wake up!’”

There is a daycare in the neighborhood and Cosmo loves kids, Colpron said.

“As soon as he found out what time the kids got there,” she said, “he’d go over there and hang out.”

Shattuck is a rescuer of animals but Cosmo is extra special to her. She considers him a free bird but also has a close attachment to him and so, when he disappeared after she came back from an out-of-town Thanksgiving, she was “devastated,” she said. “He’s like a person, not a bird.”

At first, Shattuck was concerned that Cosmo had been killed. It seems that while some neighbors loved Cosmo as much as Shattuck and Colpron, not everyone was quite as thrilled with the talking bird.

Cosmo isn’t aggressive, everyone involved with him agreed. But, said Colpron, “if people are scared of Cosmo, he finds that a little funny.”

“He will get obnoxious,” she added, saying he likes to tease people.

While the family was gone for Thanksgiving, they said a neighbor captured the bird and took him to a local animal sanctuary. The sanctuary, not realizing he was habituated to humans, released him, likely in Grants Pass.

Once he was out, Shattuck said, he started looking for home, causing quite the stir in town.

“Cosmo would sit on top of Planet Fitness, talking to people who were going in,” Shattuck said. “He was looking for me.”

Shattuck posted on Facebook about the lost bird, hoping to find him.

After following a family friend in a truck Shattuck and Colpron think he recognized, Cosmo ended up at Allen Dale.

“He went to the only kid I know in Allen Dale and knocked on the door,” Shattuck said. “When he was in the school he was jumping around saying, ‘It’s OK! I’m fine!”

That was the fifth-grade classroom where Cosmo found snacks.

That night, when the kid relayed the story of the talking crow to his father, the father called Shattuck. Colpron went the next day to collect Cosmo.

“It took about 45 minutes of me offering sardines,” she said.

She petted the bird and waited until his eyes were closed and then grabbed him.

Colpron thinks he’s happy to be home. He hasn’t been back to visit the neighbors who captured him.

But while the story of Cosmo the talking crow or raven and his or her family is sweet, Oregon State Police would rather you don’t take the wrong inspiration from it.

“We don’t want people making pets out of wild animals,” said OSP spokesperson Stephanie Bigman. “If they had contained this bird, it would have been a wildlife offense.”

For now though, Cosmo is free and back home, and the children of Allen Dale have a story to tell this holiday season that no one is going to believe.

— Lizzy Acker

==============================

A cute puppy taking himself sledding:

The very essence of joy 😍 pic.twitter.com/o11cxnWTpD

— Katie S. Phang (@KatiePhang) January 8, 2023

==============================

Dog loves his music:

==============================

==============================

And finally, Amanda and Karen… a match made in…hell?

We love a deliberate queen pic.twitter.com/JxNnJHDjoH

— Amanda (@useless_farm) February 3, 2023

She’s on Instagram, facebook if you want to follow her adventures with her rescue farm. She makes the funniest videos of her critters, including using movie soundtracks with the animals saying the lines.

Also, if you’re a fan of Ben Affleck or Dunkin – the outtakes from his Super Bowl commercial are funny.

My morning was made much brighter by a big, fluffy mix that was bigger than Scout, a harlequin Dane about the size of Bixby, and Trixie getting her first puppuccino, all at my first client’s.

That should be enough to give you some respite today. I’m back to work…

 

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Reader Interactions

21Comments

  1. 1.

    Anyway

    February 13, 2023 at 5:42 pm

    Sledding puppers made my day…

  2. 2.

    Sister Golden Bear

    February 13, 2023 at 6:00 pm

    Because I need a fucking moment of respite from all the other anti-trans shit happening today. Video at the link.

    Dogs having fun with a balloon.. pic.twitter.com/2qQAulSCvV
    — Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) February 13, 2023

  3. 3.

    Chief Oshkosh

    February 13, 2023 at 6:03 pm

    While the family was gone for Thanksgiving, they said a neighbor captured the bird and took him to a local animal sanctuary.

    There’s always ONE poindexter who juuuuust can’t help himself.

  4. 4.

    TaMara

    February 13, 2023 at 6:05 pm

    @Chief Oshkosh: Right. May karma be swift and appropriate

  5. 5.

    Dan B

    February 13, 2023 at 6:16 pm

    Quite a contrast of avians.

  6. 6.

    Anoniminous

    February 13, 2023 at 6:26 pm

    Fun and rarely heard piano piece by Satie Descriptions Automatiques

    “[Satie] Anticipating attacks from his critics:

    The Véritables préludes flasques…opens a series of pianistic works: Descriptions automatiques, Embryons desséchés, Chapitres tournés en tous sens and Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses. In them I devote myself to the sweet joys of fantasy. Those who will not understand are requested by me to observe the most respectful silence and to show an attitude of complete submission and inferiority. That is their true role.”
    These pieces are snippets of popular, street, children’s music pasted together for the fun of it, a 1913 Weird Al Yankovic.

  7. 7.

    Uncle Cosmo

    February 13, 2023 at 6:31 pm

    Although I have no connection with Cosmo other than our nyms, I have the strangest feeling that s/he is a refugee from Charm City who relocated to the Left Coast years ago after recognizing the incompetence of the guy who coaches his NFL human brethren, and will only return to the Land of Pleasant Living once said imbecile is pitched out on his cauliflower ear.

  8. 8.

    TheOtherHank

    February 13, 2023 at 6:47 pm

    Cute dog video (I might be biased, it’s my dog). She old and slow and blind now, but still the best.

    Mica and No Good Very Bad Tail

  9. 9.

    Sure Lurkalot

    February 13, 2023 at 6:54 pm

    Respite…nice! I’m not sure how Amanda stays on her toes with that emu (is it an emu?).

  10. 10.

    Cameron

    February 13, 2023 at 6:56 pm

    Thank you for this.  Tonic for heart and soul.

  11. 11.

    TaMara

    February 13, 2023 at 7:07 pm

    @TheOtherHank: OMG, adorable!

  12. 12.

    frosty

    February 13, 2023 at 7:32 pm

    The story of the crow is totally amazing. I knew they were smart but I had no idea they could talk. Much less swear; how cool is that?

  13. 13.

    cckids

    February 13, 2023 at 7:38 pm

    @Chief Oshkosh: I loved that the bird remembers, and apparently holds a grudge. Not visiting THOSE assholes again.

  14. 14.

    zhena gogolia

    February 13, 2023 at 8:04 pm

    @TheOtherHank: she caught it!

  15. 15.

    Suzanne

    February 13, 2023 at 9:03 pm

    A friendly, if somewhat foul-mouthed, crow

    Oh look, it’s Suzanne in animal form.

  16. 16.

    kalakal

    February 13, 2023 at 9:05 pm

    @cckids: Crows not only remember & hold grudges, they tell their friends & family and hold the grudge too. They are really smart

    https://www.seeker.com/angry-birds-crows-never-forget-your-face-1765286502.html

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    February 13, 2023 at 9:16 pm

    Candy coated clam bites anyone?

  18. 18.

    Yutsano

    February 13, 2023 at 11:04 pm

    You had me at the friendly corvid…

  19. 19.

    Noah Brand

    February 14, 2023 at 1:03 am

    I wrote half of a novel recently in which the uncanny behavior of Oregon crows plays a significant part. If anyone enjoys crime novels and family thrillers, you might like this: https://www.amazon.com/Things-Stole-Brandon-Penny-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0BFJKQV88/

  20. 20.

    dearmaizie

    February 14, 2023 at 7:59 am

    What a good way to start my day! Thanks,TaMara.

  21. 21.

    dearmaizie

    February 14, 2023 at 8:02 am

    @TheOtherHank:   Yay, Mica!  She got it!  Stoopid tail.

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