Mystery Solved

I was awake before sunrise on Monday morning but took my time getting out of bed.  Thus, it was light out by the time I started doing things around the home. Around 8:30 a.m. I looked out the front door to see if the trash had been picked up.  I was not surprised that it hadn't been as it was still early, but I was shocked to see that the majority of it was strewn across the street and into the driveway.  The can hadn't been touched, but the single bag that Doug had taken about before he left for work at 5:30 this morning was torn apart.  Knowing that Waste Pro would be coming soon, I immediately put on disposable gloves, grabbed a black trash bag and headed outside to clean up.  Whatever animal it was, the chicken bones and squash seemed to be the most appetizer to the culprit.

Thankfully, I had everything all cleaned up quickly as the garbageman arrived as soon as I made it back inside the house.  I told Cal that I thought that coyotes had gotten into our trash but was a little surprised as they had such a short window to do so with Doug putting the bag out in the morning.  I then called my mom to tell her about it and she suggested a raccoon or opossum instead.  That made sense, because of the timing, but the last time it happened the trash had made its way into the retention pond.  I knew an opossum couldn't drag it that far, but maybe a raccoon could. 

I didn't really think much about the garage fiasco until Doug called at lunch time.  I told him about it and he was surprised as well.  The only other time something had gotten into a garbage was when we left it outside all night. Not even an hour had passed before the sun rose this morning and he had left for work. It seemed to us that most nocturnal animals would have been back in their dens by then.  Once we hung up, I decided to go back and look through the videos on the camera that we had in the front bedroom window.  Even though they captured all of the activity in our front yard, I really didn't expect to find anything as I thought that it would be too dark to see anything or that the animal wouldn't set it.  I gave it a try anyway as I knew that it couldn't hurt to look.

Imagine my surprise when I caught the offending animal clearly on video. Just after the sunrise, a giant crow came hopping up to the white bag and started pecking at it until it split open.  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised as they are always squawking at us when we go outside and are at least twice as big as any crow that we had in Indiana, but I never even consider that the scavenger would be a bird.  I told Cal right away.  He was a little bit surprised, but it made sense to him since he thought that they were creepy.  He had even used the green light to scare one off the front yard later in the day.  After I told Cameron about it, he said that a crow never forgets a face, so we shouldn't hurt one as the rest of the "murder" will come after you always.  Guess, I will take them seriously now as a menace, keep the green light handy and never put trash out that is not secured in the garbage can again.