The Mean Girls of Millennium Park make sure Merlin can't sit anywhere near them

The name "Corvidae" come from "corvus", which is the Latin word for "crow". In classical Latin it was pronounced "COR-wus". In "corw", we see the same word ad "crow" with two of the letters reversed, indicating that this is an old Indo-European word that goes way back in the history of both languages.

Nobody - absolutely nobody - does shitlist like bluejays.

Merlin is automatically on the shitlist.

This year, many of my yard's blue jays have been rather faddishly imitating the local raptors, albeit anemically. This seems to have passed on to the second brood, which the first helps raise.

We have a ballsy squirrel we call SL. He's also on ours after he chewed through the kitchen window screen twice and absconded with a goldilox bagel. SL is the kind of squirrel who will run directly at a dog on a leash and sprint off, just to jack the dog up.

SL has spent much of this summer being tormented by mobs of jays imitating red tail hawks and the nearby great horned owls. I suspect he ate some eggs early in the season, or maybe they just know an asshole when they see one.

When the jays corner SL between the wall outside my home office and the retaining wall, it can get pretty damn surreal. Weak Owl and Hawk noises, and the usual skrawwwking. Hilarious and very wrong.