Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures With Wolf-Birds (6 page)

T
HERE IS SOMETHING UNIQUE ABOUT
ravens that permits or encourages an uncanny closeness to develop with humans. Many people keep birds as pets, but I’ve never heard of anyone who has raised a raven to adulthood call the bird their “pet.” Instead, they consider it as child, or partner. One family in Maine with whom I recently talked reared a raven, Isaak, who was free on their farm. They described their association with Isaak as “a truly magical experience.” They talked endlessly about their “beautiful relationship” with the bird, and said that since he “allowed us into his world,” they stayed home summers just to be near him (or her, because the sexes are very difficult to tell apart), whereas before they had traveled. (Isaak, as with most tame ravens, eventually became independent and left.) Another family unabashedly called their raven their “son” and “a true friend” and they said they could “not imagine life without him.”

What is the reason for such attachment? I believe it resides in mutual communication. A raven is expressive, communicates emotions, intentions, and expectations, and acts as though it understands you. This communication is privileged. It occurs when the individual close to the bird is trusted, has
earned
a trust that is not offered lightly. Given that trust, much is revealed that could otherwise never be seen.

I received a letter in December 1993 from Klaus Morkramer, a medical doctor in Oberhausen, Germany, about his raven, Jakob, whom he regularly let “free” in his apartment. There was an opportunity I could not pass up, to get a different perspective on ravens than my usual one, perched in a tree or hiding in a spruce blind in the woods.

First of all, I wondered how fast a raven would disassemble an apartment? I judged it shouldn’t take more than about three minutes, maybe five. Did this doctor live in a cave, with the capacity to adapt to a small urban terrorist?

Jakob was born in the spring of 1992, having been orphaned when his nest fell in a storm. He was raised in an animal park at Wolgast in the former East Germany. Klaus had been a fan of corvid birds for a long time, and he considered ravens the “
absolut Spitze
” (absolute peak) of the corvid line. He learned of the raven from one of his patients, and contacted the family who ran the animal park. They sold him the bird for 200 deutsche marks (then about $90). His son Anatol took the train to Wolgast to pick up the raven, bringing it back in a small, darkened cage provisioned with a large sausage for sustenance on the long trip back to Oberhausen.

The sudden arrival of Jakob at the doctor’s city apartment in the crowded industrial Essen area necessitated a quick solution to the housing problem. In foresight, a large parrot cage had already been ordered. Initially, it was to be installed on the terrace, where there was a veritable garden of trees, vines, and shrubs. It seemed an ideal place, but at first Klaus put the cage in the house to ease introductions. When it later came time to take the bird out to its allotted place, Morkramer found out that it was too late—he had not taken Jakob’s personality into account. Jakob protested to being moved out of the house, and won. “The raven always wins,” the Herr Doktor told me.
Jakob had taken his first big step to becoming a full-fledged family member: He took up permanent residence in the living room.

The next obvious move for Jakob would be to leave the cage and roam freely in the apartment itself. The rest is history. Wanting to see the results of this experiment for myself, I flew to Frankfurt, rented a car, and drove to Oberhausen.

Before I took the elevator to the fourth floor apartment, I envisioned a scene not unlike the aftermath of a bull in the proverbial china shop, except that I knew a raven would work with more patience and attention to detail. Imagine my shock when I stepped into the large living room the Morkramer clan shared with Jakob. There were no white streaks on the black upholstered leather furniture. There were no white spots on the oak table. The table had silverware in place, a sugar bowl, a cream pitcher, and several delicate cappuccino cups. All were resting intact and
upright
upon the table. Most surprising of all were the antiques. Klaus has an expensive hobby seemingly incompatible with being a raven-keeper. He is a collector of Roman antiques. Priceless original Roman ceramics sat in alcoves along the side of the room next to large, filled book cases. Invaluable paintings hung on the walls. This was not a cave. It was a museum. In fact, the only rooms in disarray were the kids’ rooms and the kitchen. I was told Jakob voluntarily confined himself to the living room, fearing to enter other rooms far from the security of his cage.

When I entered the apartment, Jakob was perched quietly in his four-by-four-by-two-foot cage next to Klaus’s favorite black leather chair. The raven seemed tranquil and uninterested in me. Poking his long bill out between the metal bars to Klaus, he held it still for a billshake, while gently nibbling fingers. The raven bowed his head sideways and further fluffed out his feathers as Klaus caressed his fuzzy head. “I have to do these greetings with him every day. The raven insists on it,” the doctor told me. “Every time I come home from work I have to go through the greeting ceremonies with him. If I’m too brief, he grabs my hand or finger and tries to pull me to him.” Klaus’s son Anatol is also greeted with soft intimate sounds, but the rest of the family (his wife, another son, a daughter) are greeted with harsh
quork
s.

Jakob finally sidled up to the edge of the cage and thrust his bill out to me. Was this a friendly invitation? I decided it was, and accepted. It was an invitation all right, but not for a love nibble. One bite was enough for me.

Despite his young age, Jakob’s tongue and mouth lining were black. Only in those ravens who have learned to be subordinate in the presence of superiors—and in a crowd of ravens, almost all encounter social superiors—does the mouth lining remain pink for several years. Jakob’s mouth color alone showed that he had already established himself as the alpha in the household. After completing the greeting ceremonies, we settled into easy chairs around a low table set for coffee.

“Doesn’t he want to come out?” I asked.

“Not yet. When he wants to come out he’ll let us know.”

For the time being, we drank cappuccino. Jakob was preoccupied with the contents of his cage. Klaus told me that whenever he gets mail, Jakob demands to have his fair portion of it. Although he is never denied, he hops around violently, giving loud frustration calls when his keeper comes into the room with a handful of mail and doesn’t immediately deliver some to him. As soon as Jakob is handed a few pieces of junk mail, he quiets down and gets busy shredding them into little pieces. This task occupies him for about a half hour. I watched him work hard at it; his chest started to heave and his breathing became heavy.

I could see right off that Jakob’s
capacity
for doing damage quickly and efficiently was great. I thought his deeds with the junk mail were admirable, however, although his intentions were not noble. According to Konrad Lorenz, “The capacity of an animal to cause damage is proportional to its intelligence.” If this is indeed an adequate IQ test, then Jakob, like many other ravens I’ve known, was close to genius.

The junk mail having been adequately shredded, Jakob next pulled on the metal gratings of the door of his cage. That was the signal. If Jakob demands, Klaus obeys. Like Grip, the pet raven of Charles Dickens’s
Barnaby Rudge
, who eventually “hopped upon the table, and with the air of some old necromancer appeared to be studying a great folio volume that lay open on a desk,” Jakob appeared to be biding his time for mischief. He carefully surveyed the room through the open cage
door, then hopped down to the floor and flapped his wings violently for about a minute as if revving up before takeoff. After these warm-up exercises, he flew once around the room, then landed on his cage. Anatol brought him a closed cardboard box and set it down on the parlor floor. This drew Jakob’s attention, and he hopped off his cage at once and set to hammering holes and ripping off chunks of cardboard. When he had destroyed the box, Anatol offered him a small mail-order catalogue. When finished with that, Jakob fixed his attention on me.

For preliminaries, he looked at me, flared his feather pants, spread his shoulders at the front so that the wings crossed just over the tail, and boldly ambled toward me, stopping only briefly to look me in the eye. He hopped still closer, sideways this time, looked me in the eye again, and drew his head back. Before I knew what was happening, he had delivered a mighty heave into my thigh with his sharp, pointed bill. I jumped back. He advanced again. I was told that he wanted the ballpoint pen with which I was taking notes. Oh! Fearing more blackmail from
Corvus triumphanus
, I surrendered it readily. He soon seemed satisfied, settling onto an arm of a leather chair. He did not move from the spot for more than an hour while we humans chatted. I noticed him watching us with his lively brown eyes.

Relaxed raven
.

Jakob had glistening black feathers that were clean and well kept. “Once a week, winter or summer, he gets a bath with the garden hose,” Klaus said. “We empty the cat litter from his cage—there is
never any smell—and then we take the cage out onto the terrace and direct the garden hose in one corner of it. First he puts his bill and head into the water stream, then his chest and even his back. As a socially liberated bird,
he
determines the bath’s duration. If the hose is shut off too early, he hollers loudly. When sufficiently bathed, he looks like a plucked chicken. When he starts his feather-care, we take him in. He drips and preens till dry.”

The garden hose routine was, like many others, a compromise worked out from experience. A big bowl might
seem
more convenient for bathing, but unfortunately a bath is not the first thing on a raven’s mind when you give him a big bowl full of water. The very first thing a raven does is tip it over. As Klaus pointed out, “To live with a raven in the house requires a certain capacity for compromise.” No kidding. I’d just had my first lesson.

Family mealtime is, naturally, of special interest to Jakob. As soon as he hears the first dishes rattling, he hops onto the topmost perch in his cage, because that perch affords a better view into bowls and dishes as they are carried past into the dining room. He expects to partake in all of the offerings that come by. When the first bowl goes by, he begins to hop impatiently from perch to perch. If it takes too long until he gets his fair share, he hops ever faster and begins to make loud and penetrating
kek-kek-kek
calls. These calls do not at all sound like the plaintive food “yells” birds in the wild give when they are near food but can’t yet eat it. Instead, they are the calls ravens make when an intruder such as a hawk or a human comes near their nest. Hearing them, I had little doubt what Jakob was saying. He was saying, “I am frustrated,” which, given the context, meant more specifically, “I want some now.” Since Klaus understands ravenese, Jakob gets the delicacies pronto. It is only fair that just as the Morkramers obey him, so he “obeys” them, as well, coming instantly to “
Komm
” (come) when he expects a caress or a tidbit in return.

Jakob bravely eats almost everything that is brought to the table, but he has a strong predilection for Chinese cooking, Hessian cheesecake, and raw bird egg (yolk only, unlike Goliath et al.). He likes fruits—figs, tomatoes, strawberries, preferably with cream and sugar,
and grapes, but he turns his head away from apples and oranges, shaking his bill violently with disgust. Jakob has become something of a gourmet, yet I suspect he would not pass up good roadkill.

When the food is to his liking, he responds with a short, soft, two-note call that he also gives under other circumstances associated with contentment, such as after a particularly satisfying head-scratch. After a good meal, late in the evening, Jakob often entertains himself, and others, with his “talking”—a rambling, throaty warble.

Living with another creature, you naturally feel closer to it the more activities that can be shared, especially important activities like watching TV. German television is much like American television. It does not have a great deal of interest for raven viewers. So the Morkramers supplement their TV diet with videotapes. During television viewing, Jakob sometimes holds still, watching with one eye from the side of the head, as birds do. But does he see images? It seems so, because one time while watching a show with different mammals, he suddenly became agitated and let loose with alarm calls when a picture of a raccoon came on. He showed no alarm at wolves and deer. Here, it seemed to me, was an excellent opportunity for behavioral test, because it was possible to control what the subject gets to see, which is seldom possible in the wild.