Antigonish Just Has a Lot of Crows

Fall: the season of changing leaves, warm sweaters, and apple pie. Truly, the list is endless. However, I have also decided that fall in Antigonish has some of its own traits. Fall in Antigonish is the season of crows. As the warm, sunny days of summer draw to a close, the clouds that linger over campus call the crows back. If you do not know what I am talking about, listen closely and you’ll hear them.

I first noticed the high number of crows last year. Around the middle of October, each morning, I began waking up to a new alarm clock: the crows. This may sound like an over-exaggeration, but I know I, and many others, have also woken up to the sounds of…nature. By nature, I mean the sound of those black birds that flock to our campus each fall. Over the course of last year, I became accustomed to the 6 am wake-up calls and to the fact that Antigonish has a lot–and I mean a lot–of crows.

I had thought, perhaps, it was my location on campus or pure bad luck that attracted the hundreds of crows that sat outside my window. I was wrong. Last week, I woke up to the familiar sound of what was often my alarm clock last year. After being woken up, I opened my curtains and looked out to see the hundreds—or what felt like thousands— of crows sitting on the wire and swooping in circles above my house. That leads me to today, where I have realized that I either have really bad luck, or, most likely, Antigonish just has a lot of crows. Having explained my experience to many people, I’ve concluded that I am not the only one who thinks there is an absurd amount of crows. Every person I’ve told my story to has had a similar encounter.

Nonetheless, this shared experience means two things: firstly, I do not have bad luck and more importantly, Antigonish does have a lot of crows. I took the liberty of looking into Antigonish’s crow problem and discovered an article written in 2007 by Bruce Muschel, where he stated that, at the time, there were thousands of crows in Antigonish. In fact, the town used high-technology devices to drive the crows away. Last year, I even came across the crows on social media. Specifically, the Instagram account, @stfx_murders showcases the heavy presence that they have taken on campus. The account features sightings of crows on campus and yet again, proves that there are too many crows in Antigonish. From my research and surveying, I can conclude I am not going crazy. Like everyone else, I am, in fact, seeing a copious amount of crows swooping around StFX. Despite past efforts to remove them, I believe that if the crows ever left, they all came back.