Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 12/01) - The raven lands on the shiny metal hood of the company truck with a plunk.

You can hear its nails scrape the painted steel as it waddles up to the base of the windshield and pecks in the rain gutter below the wipers.

The raven is being coy. It's not after bugs. What it wants is french fries. After a little more token bug-searching, it hops onto the driver's-side rear-view mirror and stares expectantly into the cab.

Hypnotized by the stare and against all his better judgment, the driver reaches for a fry and holds it out to the raven.

The fry disappears with a quick thrust of the long black beak. The staring resumes.

Just as one of their Hay River brethren began following a cab driver for the cheezies he offered, the ravens of Frame Lake South have taken to mooching McDonald's fries.

"It's strange that you called because I saw, just minutes ago, a raven eating McDonald's french fries in the Wal-Mart parking lot," said author and wildlife expert Jamie Bastedo.

"Somebody had eaten all but four of their french fries and chucked them mindlessly into the parking lot."

Bastedo called out in his best Raveneese as he walked toward the bird. It stayed close to the fries until he came to within a metre, unusual behaviour for the typically cautious bird.

Are ravens more likely to eat a McDonald's fry than, say, a Diner fry?

Hardly, said Bastedo.

"It's definitely not a discriminating bird. A mouldy bread crust, a McDonald's french fry -- it's all gold to the raven. It helps it survive the winter."

Just as the soft yellow metal drew people to the city, their garbage has drawn ravens.

Bastedo said more than a thousand of the birds were counted in a couple of city block area during a recent Christmas bird count.

The main feeding ground is the dump, where ravens chow down on food we've thrown away.

Until a raven-proof force-field is invented and used to bar the birds from the city landfill, there will always be a healthy supply of ravens in the city.

In the meantime, there will be a select few of the brainy black birds that prefer take-out.