“You got a thing about ravens, ET?” One of the IPA gentlemen asked me that question as I kept showing them raven images and suggesting where they might go on the site. I thought about that question for a few seconds, then cringed and and shrugged. I could have said a couple true things that I find gascinating about ravens, but it was InstaPot time in the studio, so I didn’t.

One true thing is that they make perfect pets. They don’t leave dander around to make my brother sneeze, like a bobcat or a cougar or a coyote or a wolf would do. You never have to feed them or clean their imaginary cages or even pet them. If you get weak-willed and lonesome for some animal affection and try to sneak up on one so you can pet it, it’ll fly away while squawking one of their hundred or so vocalizations in your general direction … and not the raven equivalent of anything nice. How Odin got his two to do his bidding and sit on his shoulder or his arm and not leave gooey deposits is just one more annoying difference beteen gods and mortals.

Another true thing is that ravens are way smarter than most chickens (although I trained a young chicken with a bent beak to eat out of my hand, which made him smarter than most other chickens of my acquaintance). I didn’t read about the IQ differential in a credible source like the Bulletin on Avian Intellects, but just ask yourself if even Odin could talk a raven into laying eggs on cue for human consumption or letting themselves to be harvested like clucky ears of corn with oversized thighs and breasts..

Pretty sure that’s enough fascinations for one post. Except maybe that the local pranksies and I find them endlesly mysterious … as Poe did.