There Are Crows, Crows, Crows Everywhere

Considering that a scarecrow has been one of the main characters in the series from the beginning, it’s not too surprising we’d see some crows in the Oz books. The first to be mentioned are a few who were scared away by the newly-made Scarecrow. One old crow realizes that the man is stuffed, however, and tells his fellows that the straw man is no threat. He also, however, tells the Scarecrow that he’d be as good as any other man if he had brains, which the Scarecrow then makes his mission. This particular crow doesn’t appear in any of the other canonical books, but it’s a major character in Alexander Volkov’s Magic Land books. Volkov names the crow Kaggi-Karr, which is the Russian onomatopoeia for a crow’s call. And even though the Scarecrow refers to the old crow as male in Baum’s writing, Kaggi-Karr is female. One apocryphal Oz book, Onyx Madden’s Mysterious Chronicles, has Ozma encounter this crow, whom Madden names Kuskar. The crow explains his role in the Scarecrow’s story, and gives the name of the Munchkin farmer who made the straw man as Crofter.

Later on in the first book, the Wicked Witch of the West sends a flock of forty crows to destroy Dorothy and her companions, but the Scarecrow twists their necks. Another flock (actually, “murder” is the proper term, isn’t it?) shows up in the Little Wizard Story about the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. They carry the famous pair out of a river, but mischievously leave them stranded at the top of a tall tree.

The adventuring party in Grampa turns into crows when Grampa smokes magical tobacco, and a crow mocks Ruggedo at the beginning of Pirates. I’m sure there are others as well, and extending it to other members of the crow family gives us even more minor characters. The heroes of Land are temporarily stranded in a jackdaws’ nest across the desert from Oz.

The exact location of this giant nest is never specified, the dialogue suggesting that it’s in the United States, but Baum’s later decision to place other fairylands across the desert from Oz might make it more likely that it’s in one of these lands. James E. Haff and Dick Martin’s map places it in Aurissau, a country mentioned in the short story “The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie.” The nest is full of treasures, including paper money, which the companions use to re-stuff the Scarecrow after their fierce battle with the birds.

I’m not sure why jackdaws would have stolen banknotes, but maybe they hoped to exchange them for precious metals at some point. {g} Also, in Magic, Kiki Aru turns himself into a magpie in order to steal money from an old man in Ev.

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