Cosmo, Foul-Mouthed Crow

Crow in a school—a tale as old as schools.

Last month, Allen Dale Elementary School in Grants Pass, Oregon (south part of the state, down by Medford) was blessed with a visit from a black-winged bird. From Oregon Live:

“This crow showed up at our school just out of the blue one morning,” said Naomi Imel, an education assistant at Allen Dale, over the phone on Thursday.

It began looking into classrooms, Imel said, and pecking on doors. At one point, it made its way into a fifth-grade classroom where it “helped itself to some snacks,” she said.

The bird, it turned out, is named Cosmo. How was this connection made? Because, of course, Cosmo likes to curse:

Imel said the bird wasn’t aggressive at all and seemed to love the kids.

“It landed on some people’s heads,” she said.

And, she added, it spoke. The bird could say, “What’s up?” and “I’m fine” and “a lot of swear words.”

The full story here evidently goes as follows:

When Cosmo was a baby, a family ten or twenty miles south of Grants Pass rescued him from a shelter. He remains close with the family, from whom he’s learned a few dozen words, some of them reportedly inappropriate for fifth-grade classrooms.

Cosmo is “a free bird,” which I take to mean that he doesn’t actually live with the family that rescued him. He can and does wander, and he, like many of us, is polarizing to his neighbors, reportedly because “he likes to tease people” (again, he’s a foul-mouthed crow). Over Thanksgiving, with Cosmo’s family out of town, neighbors from an anti-Cosmo faction captured him and took him to an animal sanctuary, which, seeing he was healthy and not realizing he could speak (I assume he was waiting for his lawyer), released him in Grants Pass. Obviously, this was quite confusing for Cosmo, but he did what any reasonable crow would do: He went to Planet Fitness, started chatting, and when he saw a truck he recognized, followed it to the school. There, the truck dropped off a fifth-grader, who after a day with of Cosmo in the classroom went home and told his dad. The dad, knowing Cosmo and/or having seen on Facebook that Cosmo was missing, contacted Cosmo’s family, who came and collected him the next day.

We heard about Cosmo not because anyone told us directly (though many of you live in Oregon, so as Cosmo would say: What the fuck, guys?) but because Cosmo was featured in yesterday’s #CrowOrNo by Kaeli Swift, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in avian ecology and on a weekly basis examines whether a photographed bird is or is not a crow (some thought Cosmo might be a raven—Swift is confident Cosmo is indeed a crow). The thread’s at the link if you want it, but Swift also posted this thread about human-imprinted crows, which is a worthwhile read if you’re interested in crow-human relations at large. Or if you just want to see Cosmo in his little winter hat.