Belated happy holidays from me and this blog’s namesake! Pumpkins and gourds are wonderful enrichment for birds like ravens, as they provide a nutritious snack AND facilitate every bird’s favorite pastime: wanton destruction.
He was ready to fight the pumpkin at first, fluffing up and pecking at it, but after a few hours he decided it wasn’t a threat and got to work ripping it apart.
Anyway, I thought that since this is my 100th entry on this blog, I’d give you all some updates on this crazy guy, and highlights of what he’s been up to.
Don’t get me wrong, I love him, but he bites. I mean, he literally bites constantly. They’re mostly playful bites - having been bitten for realsies by the gunshot raven, I can definitely note the difference - but boy do they hurt. Within a few minutes of my going into the mew, he’s bitten me (or tried to bite me) at least once.
I took to telling him, ‘Alright, see you tomorrow,’ and leaving the pen as soon as he bit, giving him the message that if he bites, he won’t get any interaction. He clearly understands this concept, because now when I say ‘see you tomorrow,’ he hops onto the door and fluffs up like he’s going to stop me from leaving.
Once I leave, he caws and cries for me to come back. I know he wants to hang out, so why does he insist on biting? It’s very discouraging some days.
About two months back, our shipment of rats and mice was late, leaving us with only pinkies to feed all of the birds. None of them were too pleased about this, especially Kakaaki. Normally, when I hand him a mouse or rat, he digs right in, but when I offered him pinkies, he would snatch them from my hand, throw them down onto the dirt, and immediately try to bite my fingers as if to say, ‘How dare you?’
I wouldn’t have expected a raven to become so choosy about his meals.
We feed our raptors a few things: rats, mice, pinkies (baby mice and rats), and baby chickens. Some of them will only eat one or two things, but the others like a bit of variety, particularly the corvids. If I bring the raven mice too many days in a row, or rats, he starts leaving behind lots of leftovers.
He has different ways of eating each prey item, too. Pinkies are usually swallowed whole. Baby chickens are torn apart, fluff everywhere. With mice, he typically begins by biting the head off and swallowing that, before digging into the stomach. Rats, he eats in a more interesting way.
If they’re male, he always begins by expertly neutering them. I’ve watched Dr. F do a few neuters, and I’m starting to suspect that Kakaaki has, too.
See, neutering is not so much ‘cutting the balls off’ as it is ‘hollowing them out like avocados.’
He makes a little slit, pulls out the testicle and attached ductus deferens, and downs them.
Sometimes he’ll offer me one, placing a gooey little gonad very close to me and watching me. When I politely decline, he eats it himself.
Once he’s done that, he opens up the abdomen and takes out the large intestine and drops it on the ground. The large intestine is, of course, the one where all the nasty stuff is stored.
He then eats the small intestine, followed by the rest of the guts, before moving on to the rest.
I dunno, I thought it was interesting.
He Makes Weird Noises...but is Shy about it
Shortly after the older bald eagle was transferred, a volunteer was sitting out by the mews when she heard a sharp, angry eagle call. She sneaked up to Kakaaki’s pen and realized it was him, but every time he saw her or she lifted up her camera, he’d stop. She had to crouch behind the door for a long time before he went back to mimicking the angry eagle, and she got a short recording of it.
He also makes little human speech-like babbles, but no one has heard him clearly say anything yet.
Sometimes, he barks like a little dog. I’ve heard him do this when I’m cleaning and he’s bored by himself, but like the eagle call, he won’t do it while anyone is in the mew with him, with the exception of one occasion.
I noticed a few bird mites on him and mentioned it to Dr. F, who said we should catch him up and spray him down, and de-worm him. I told him I was hesitant about grabbing Kakaaki myself, as I’d worked hard to form a bond with him and didn’t want to lose his trust, so Dr. F asked intern-Katie to do it.
Intern-Katie was excited at first, but she’d never spent any time with the raven, so as soon as she entered the mew, he jumped onto his highest perch and watched her warily. When she approached, slowly, hands up, he put his head low and started barking like a small, angry dog.
This freaked her out a bit, so I suggested she try throwing a towel over him like a net. When she approached this time, towel at the ready, he started making a low, long, croaking-groaning sound like the dead girl from the Grudge.
‘Aaauauuuuuuauuuuuuuuuuaaaah,’ he said.
Asserting that this was ‘freaking her the fuck out,’ Katie gave up.
Dr. F had to come catch him, which he made look incredibly easy, and we treated him for parasites.
I’ve never heard him make the Grudge noise since then, so I must assume he only takes on the spirit of Kayako when he’s really angry.
He Likes Me, Despite all the Biting
He’s come to recognize the sound of my car from all the others, and when I pull up to the lot, he caws loudly. If I don’t come to see him quickly, he starts screaming.
During the last few weeks of the semester, I was too busy to go see him much, and he evidently got pretty unhappy and screamed all the time. He was really excited when I returned the other day for the first time in almost three weeks.
He definitely doesn’t see me as a ‘mom,’ the way Baby Crow did, but I do think we’re friends, and I’m deeply fond of him. It makes the fact that he might be moving to Baltimore next year all the more difficult... but more on than another time.
