Welcome to Evil Week, our annual dive into all the slightly sketchy hacks we wouldn’t normally recommend. Want to cheat your way to free drinks, play elaborate mind games, or, er, launder some cash? We’ve got all the information you need to be successfully obnoxious.
How do you become friends with a crow?
A few months ago I tried to make myself look like a bunch of ducks so they would think I was their mother. That wasn’t so great. All the ducks did was poop all over my house, and oh my god, the constant quacking. So I’m switching to crows. Instead of a bunch of dumb ducks following me around, I’m going to have a whole bunch of crows—a murder of crows—following me around like a black cloud of menace. And I’m going to use my own personal army of crows to destroy my enemies.
Unlike ducks, crows are intelligent, self-sufficient animals that don’t need to be put in diapers. They solve problems and communicate with each other. They are smart, perhaps as smart as a seven-year-old human child. They even seem to have rituals and something of a culture. But most importantly, crows can recognize human faces. They will recognize my face as that of their master. See my face, ravens, rooks, and blackbirds, and listen to my mighty caw, for I am Stephen Johnson, Master of the Crows.
It is illegal to keep crows as pets in many places. I plan to let the birds in my crow army live their own lives, because I am too lazy to care for them, but if you plan to have a real crow as a pet, you may have to hide it from the authorities, who often look down on the special love between a person and his crows.
