October 26, 2021

New Species “Black Bear Crow” Will Count Deer in Maine

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Yesterday we learned that in one Maine community, “public education and a careful monitoring program” helped to solve problems with black bears. Now that we know that black bears can be educated in our public schools, a rumor has surfaced that a Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife bear biolo-jest, whose community the bears were educated, has successfully cross bred a black bear with a crow. He calls it the black bear crow.

(* Editor’s Note: A reader sent me the above photo with the inane notion that black bear crows might be used to count deer in Maine. The suggestion coming the result of my previous blogs wondering why many other game species in Maine have a definite number attached but not the white tail deer. I went with his suggestion and expanded the insanity just a bit more.)

The story goes that this biolo-jest knew that crows are very intelligent creatures; bears a bit on the dumb side but loaded with brute strength. He fathomed that combining the brute strength with the intelligence of the crow, he would end up with a very strong and smart animal.

But what good would such a creature be?

In his first attempt, his cross-breeding gave him a specimen similar to the photograph above but being that it ended up with a bear’s head and brain, it was too stupid to fly. Something needed to be done. That’s when the biolo-jest came up with the scheme to send bears to his local community’s public school and get an education.

Fearing that if his bear got too smart, he would run away, once the bear learned his ABCs and how to count, he yanked him from the classroom and then cross-bred him with the crow and ended up with a flying bear that could read and count.

But what good would such a creature be?

The biolog-jest thought and thought and recalled reading my article I wrote about why, after Maine spent money with helicopters, they hadn’t provided sportsmen and Maine citizens with a population count of their precious deer. That’s when he came up with the idea to train the black bear crow to fly all over the state and count deer.

In the biolo-jest’s first attempt at using the black bear crow to count deer, he gave explicit instruction to the animal on what to do. After a test flight over the Maine Animal Park, the black bear crow returned with a count of 42 deer. The biolo-jest knew there were only 5 deer at that time in the park and couldn’t understand what the problem might be. He considered that perhaps the black bear crow learned enough to realize that he was working for free and that the other biolo-jests got handsome pay and excellent retirement benefits, but that didn’t seem likely.

After some serious thought and recruiting help from the commissioner, they were able to determine that the black bear crow was counting every animal it could see, not just deer. The bear, during his bout with the public education system, hadn’t been taught how to differentiate between different species.

Fearing the black bear crow would be treated differently in public school than the bears, being of mixed species, the biolo-jest opted for a private tutor. At first the biolo-jest thought of Bill Clinton, thinking he would make an excellent person to teach the black bear crow how to identify species, at least male and female. But he realized that probably a man who wasn’t sure what the word “is” is, might not get the job done.

After countless hours of research on the subject, the biolo-jest was talking to his neighbor about his dilemma. The neighbor’s 8-year-old son overheard the conversation and suggested that he could teach the black bear crow species identification. Baffled, the biolo-jest and his neighbor looked at each other with blank expressions. The boy explained that he had a video game where first you had to identify a species before it could be shot in simulation.

Within two weeks the black bear crow could spot a deer faster than the head deer biolo-jest at the MDIFW. The problem for the biolo-jest was not now being able to get the black bear crow up off the couch and go to work.

The biolo-jest took his black bear crow, who he named Aldo, to work one day and made his presentation to the commission, the Joint Committee for MDIFW and the governor’s office, to use Aldo to count white tail deer. He guaranteed an accurate account and that it would be done within one week from the time he started; at a cost of only $1.6 million……..per flight.

MDIFW will begin counting deer using the black bear crow this winter but on the condition that none of the data be released to the public.

The governor is setting up a task force to see if there isn’t some data that could be released to the public. They will provide the results of their research to the governor on or before August 1, 2018.