The raven boyfriend

Growing up, my mom used to tell me stories about her cousin, who kept a pet crow, and a de-scented skunk as pets (they were rescued animals).

Hearing about how cool they were*, I've always liked both crows and skunks, and in the lower mainland**, both are plentiful***.

This particular house on Vancouver Island backs a nature preserve, and is a hot-spot for animal activity, including deer, raccoons, squirrels, birds, and various other critters. I've mentioned this a lot on this blog, but am too lazy (and still too sore from my ribs/etc) to take the time to link to past posts.

Anyways, two summers ago (when we first moved here), whenever I was working outside/landscaping/etc, I always would see these three enormous birds circling overhead which made the strangest variety of sounds I've heard... like a klee klee klooo warbling sound, throaty trills, and screeches.

I had no idea what they were, and were always too high to tell colour/etc, all I could tell was that they were big.

Last summer, there was only one. It would circle around by itself, but as (I think?) it got used to seeing me outside all the time, it started to land in one of the big trees and would call and talk, and I started to talk back.

Unfortunately, the tree is super tall, and has super dense foliage (a conifer of some kind...not pine or cedar though... I'm not sure what it is), so even though I knew the bird was there, I still couldn't tell what kind it was until my mom came over to spend a couple days with me, and she brought her camera which has a super high zoom.

She was curious/confused as I was, because she had never heard a bird like that before, and through her camera, we were able to take a few pictures... and discovered it looked like a giant crow.

Duh, a raven.

But growing up in the lower mainland, neither of us had ever seen a raven before... so we weren't familiar with the sounds it made.

Anyways, the raven is still all on its own... and every time I'm outside, he (I've decided to call it a he) perches in the big tree and talks to me, but he never will when my husband is outside. So it's a joke that the raven is my secret boyfriend ;)


So that's the story of my raven boyfriend ;)

Okay, too much sitting... going to flop on the sofa and ice my ribs... yowch.






* which is why crows frequently show up in my stories
** local term for Vancouver & the surrounding area
*** no skunks on Vancouver Island though... :(