{"id":54600,"date":"2025-05-10T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/?p=54600"},"modified":"2025-05-09T19:10:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T18:10:03","slug":"black-on-black-the-crows-vs-the-connewitz-cops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/?p=54600","title":{"rendered":"Black on Black: The Crows vs The Connewitz Cops"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You see them everywhere if you know where to look. The peanut people. Innocent. Innocuous. Old. Find yourself a park bench in winter or spring, sit down, and close your eyes. Listen. There\u2019s a European Robin with its short, crisp tick<\/em>. The boo-beep, boo-beep, boo-beep <\/em>of the Great Tit. And there, somewhere nearby, the rustle of plastic and the soft patter-plap<\/em> of something falling on the floor. Keep your eyes closed! Soon you\u2019ll hear a few wing-flaps and a soft caw<\/em>. Hear a few hops along the ground. Confident. Brazen. Is that swagger? (You\u2019ve good ears.) Then the clack of a beak on a nut and a flutter of wings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open your eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you missed was a local Carrion Crow, Raven, or Rook nabbing monkey nuts chucked by a peanut person. You really should have kept your eyes open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many of these benevolent guardians around Leipzig, passing out much-needed protein to the black cloaks. But is it as benign as all that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other day, The Mathematician and I were out strolling in the green, being careful not to tread on star-of-bethlehem and violets. We see a young man with a giant bag of nuts and several corvids at his feet. They look at him, waiting. He throws a couple. There\u2019s a tussle. The quickest and closest crows fly off a metre with their prize and begin pecking at the shells. The others don\u2019t mob them. They wait. They know more nuts are coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we near the group, a few black eyes turn our way but we\u2019re not a threat. They stay put. The nuts rain down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cD\u2019you think he\u2019s lonely?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe. You think the crows are his friends?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think he<\/em> thinks they are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We pass him and walk towards a man doing HIIT training between two topographical oddities. (Is that half-buried masonry?) He sports a gaudy headband and a moustache made for someone twice his age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little farther on, I see a flash of yellow. Two cyclists have crossed a nearby car park and are heading towards us. High-vis helmets, high-vis jackets \u2014 everything about them seems to glow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA little overdressed for the park, aren\u2019t they?\u201d I say to The Mathematician, pointing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re police.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stop pointing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They cycle past us, barely making eye contact \u2014 their focus is on skirting the large puddles in their path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are the bike ones armed, I wonder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I turn to see where they\u2019re heading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre they lost?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI doubt it,\u201d says The Mathematician. \u201cOh, a new plant!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst she stoops to identify it, I watch the cops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve stopped by the peanut guy. What do they want with him?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSticky mouse ear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sticky mouse ear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She takes a step sideways to identify something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not illegal to feed crows, is it?\u201d I say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I casually observe. One cop is talking, the other is hanging back, like he\u2019s keeping watch or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomeone must have called them though, right? I mean, it\u2019s pretty out of the way here. Are they park police?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recognise the ellipsis. It means: \u201cThis conversation, being less interesting than my latest discovery, has been placed in a buffer for later review\/deletion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that one?\u201d I ask<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShepherd\u2019s purse. The app\u2019s a bit slow today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve taken my eyes off the action. When I look back, the police are gone. Peanut man is walking forlornly off the path. His crows have all flown off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat was that about,\u201d I ask myself, and have a brief discussion. I (we?) come up with a plausible theory. The cops and the crows are at war. It makes perfect sense. The cawing that you hear from the rooftops? Lookouts. There\u2019s regular trouble down south in Connewitz, a very left-wing part of the city. (Think militant left: bin and car burnings, regular assaults on the police station, demos, thrown bricks \u2026) And how do they choose to dress? In black!<\/em> The colour of their co-conspirators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or masters?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I\u2019m onto something. The crows are the gang lords, the heads of the anti-establishment coalition. And the peanut people? Their servants, or messengers, or ambassadors. Are they<\/em> the ones who spray all the ACAB tags around the city?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m confident I\u2019ve cracked it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat are you smiling about?\u201d asks The Mathematician, standing up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love crows,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She squeezes my hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a turf war takes to the skies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[217,49,209,218],"class_list":{"0":"post-54600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cf","8":"tag-cops","9":"tag-crow","10":"tag-leipzig","11":"tag-peanut-people"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54600"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54603,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54600\/revisions\/54603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}