Some Alaska Costco shoppers say they were stolen by crows in the store’s parking lot
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Some Alaska Costco shoppers said they were stolen by crows in the store’s parking lot.
Matt Lewallen said he was packing his food in his car in the parking lot of an Anchorage Costco, when the crows threw themselves to steal a short rib from his cart, Anchorage Daily News reported on Friday.
“I literally took 10 steps and came back, two crows came down and I immediately took one from the package, snatched it and flew with it,” Lewallen said.
Lewallen said the piece of meat was about 10 x 18 inches large – a considerable mass for a considerable bird.
“I know what I’m doing; it’s not the first time, “Lewallen said. “They’re very fat, so I think they have a whole system in there.”
And when he got back home, he noticed that one of the crows had taken a blow to another shore, but did not rob it.
“I cut that meat and started marinating it, and my wife said, ‘It’s rude, we should take it back,'” Lewallen said. “Costco took it back even after we started marinating them and gave us a full refund.”
Additional observations of crow thieves also appeared on social networks.
“My parents took care of their business after a store and came home with less steak!” Kimberly Waller wrote on Facebook. “The bird snatched it from the pack in the parking lot.”
Anchor resident Tamara Josey responded to Waller’s post and referred to crows as “computers.” She said the crows floated her in an attempt to steal her food.
“I had two crows, one that was in the car next to me and he kept squeaking really loud,” Josey said. “He sat in the car and looked at me, then he jumped next to the bed of the truck on the other side and kept going back and forth. The other raven was on the ground. He kept trying to pull – I had those little watermelons you have in the mesh bags – he kept trying to grab the net and take the watermelons off my cart. ”
A raven began to fly in a circle around Josey until he made them slip.
“They were waiting for another opportunity to take the melons off the cart, but they were never discouraged,” she said. “They just stayed posted, waiting for their next opportunity to steal something from my basket.”
“They are very dedicated to their mission,” she added.
An Anchorage Costco manager declined to comment to the newspaper about the raven thieves.
Anchorage Audubon measures the population of crows every December. The group reported 923 common crows in 2018, 621 in 2019 and 750 birds in 2020.
Rick Sinnott, a former wildlife biologist with the State Department of Fish and Game, said hundreds of crows fly to Anchorage in the winter for food. After winter turns to spring, most crows leave, Sinnott said.
But before doing so, the crows stay around to snatch meat, fruits and vegetables.
“For years, decades, they’ve been watching people in the parking lots of grocery stores with all this food,” Sinnott said. “I know what a piece of fruit looks like in a food cart because they saw it on the floor. in a trash can. ”