London had rat problems and New York has an excess of pigeons. In Tokyo, the problem is the crow. In case you haven't read about it, Tokyo has a problem with crows that is reaching plague proportions. They love eating garbage, and Tokyo has a lot of garbage because it has no landfill sites. Normally, crows are peaceful black birds with an annoying caw, but in the springtime, Tokyo crows swoop down and attack people to protect their nests and new eggs. From an interview with an exterminator hired by the city government, "People are scared by these crows," said Takashi Nose, 32, "They are big, black, with a big beak, and kind of scary."I'd heard about them, but I don't think I was quite ready for what Tokyo crows are really like. Firstly, they're huge. They have a wing span of around a metre. Tokyo crows are like three North American crows put together. Secondly, there are a million of them all over the place. Crow numbers in Tokyo have soared from 3,000 to 40,000 in 15 years. And their noise isn't chirping or singing, it's this obnoxious cawing that starts at 4:30 AM. Tokyo's old governor, Shintaro Ishihara, had a funny suggestion when he was asked what to do about the crows, proclaiming, "I intend to make crow-meat pies Tokyo's special dish."
There are a lot of crows in Tokyo.
Just so you know.
1 comments:
Crows are weird birds. I saw this website that listed animal sounds in different languages, and the crow's sound was pretty much the same across the board whereas other animals had really different words/sounds for each language. I guess they really got their message across!
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