I’m writing this letter at 5:30 a.m. in regard to the more than 200 crows outside my window who directly caused my state of consciousness. This is not a one-time occurrence. Almost every other morning, I find myself in a similar predicament. I live in the dorms, and apparently the trees outside my window are the best place for the wandering demons to roost.

They sit there, quietly, throughout the night, until the first shreds of dawn. This is their cue to be my uninvited alarm clock. Within minutes, I awake to the shrieks of hundreds of insanely squawking birds. I’ve had enough.

Students at Northern Iowa don’t have this problem. It’s not that the crows like Ames better than Cedar Falls, it’s just that the grounds crews there deal with them differently. Instead of Iowa State’s tactics of frightening the crows out of trees just after dusk with air cannons and laser pointers, the folks at Northern Iowa just go out, kill a few crows, and then hang the carcasses in the trees most frequented by the winged noisemakers. The birds refuse to roost in a tree that contains one of their dead confederates.

I’ve tried everything I can think of to make them leave the tree near my window short of this solution, but after being woken up this morning for the umpteenth time, I feel that now no holds are barred. I plan to obtain (in a very satisfying manner) the body of a deceased crow, and hang it outside in my tree.

If Iowa State were smart, they’d acknowledge Northern Iowa’s success and follow suit.

John Messerly

Senior

Political Science