The Key the Crow Took
A crow named Walter stole my tractor key three mornings in a row and returned it every evening to the same fence post by the gate.
I keep my tractor key on a nail by the barn door, where it has hung for nine years. It is a plain brass key on a loop of baling twine, and it has never gone anywhere except into my pocket. So when it disappeared on a Monday in February, I assumed I had left it in the truck.
I had not. I searched the truck, the shop, the office, the parlor and under three cows. At eight I gave up, borrowed my neighbor's tractor and fed the herd. When I came back at dusk, the key was sitting on the third fence post from the gate, shining in the last of the sun. Next to it, on the same post, was a crow, looking at me.
I called him Walter, because he looked like a Walter. On Tuesday the key went missing again. On Wednesday too. Each evening it reappeared on the same post, exactly where it could be seen, as if he were running a lending library with a very short loan period. On Thursday I sat in a lawn chair at the barn door with a thermos of coffee and watched. At seven, Walter dropped from the cottonwood, snatched the key off the nail with a flick of his beak and flew off. He did it so smoothly that I felt rude for watching.
I tried hiding the key, and he found it. I tried a bigger ring, and he waited until I was out of the barn and took the whole thing. In the end I hung a shiny bolt on the nail, about the size of the key, and Walter, apparently satisfied, took the bolt and left the key alone. We have lived in peace since.
My brother says it is a coincidence. My nephew says it is a lesson in security. I say it is a fine example of what the tractor and equipment shelf at the feed store never covers: a good machine is only as reliable as the animal that has a stake in it. A neighbor read the whole thing on farm.FM and said Walter should be on the payroll.
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