This morning was the first #crow interaction where one of them came down to the small pile of peanuts, took a couple a foot away and actually cracked them open without flying across the street. The other crow still swoops in, grabs a few and leaves.

This feels like progress.

Also the young deer couple showed back up in the neighbor's yard, but didn't interfere.

I'm not sure what else to expect, but this was nice. They're still about 40 feet away, so I'm definitely not crowding them. Or CROWding them.

#corvids not #cervids

I get that folks love hunting but frankly, I wouldn't eat deer or elk anymore at all. That's just me. Prions are frightening. It's not known what the risk to humans is with this but prion diseases have extremely long incubation periods. So you might think there's no problem...when there is.

"Researchers have identified chronic wasting disease (CWD) prions in raw, cooked, and cured meat from an infected elk in Texas, confirming the presence of the infectious CWD-causing agents in muscle but concluding that the risk of transmission to humans through consumption is still unclear and requires continued vigilance.

Cooking temperatures are well known to be ineffective in disabling CWD prions, which are misfolded cervid (eg, deer, moose, elk) prions, leading to neurologic disease and death. The prions spread among cervids and through environmental contamination. There is no vaccine or treatment for CWD, which has been found in 35 US states, Canada, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and South Korea."
#prions #InfectiousDisease #cervids #CWD https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/cwd-prions-confirmed-raw-cooked-elk-meat-and-water-used-boiling-risk-people