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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/bsd-x on 2026-03-31 04:29:35+00:00.
This has been building for two years, and I only recently understood the full extent of the damage.
I work second shift. I get home around 10:30 PM. Every night I walk to my porch and toss peanuts into the yard for the crows before going inside. I started doing it because I read that crows remember human faces and form longterm relationships with people who feed them. I wanted to see if it worked.
It worked.
I did not realize how any of this looked from the outside until my neighbor stopped me last fall and asked if I was "doing okay."
Apparently, for two years, multiple neighbors have watched a man arrive home alone at 10:30 PM, stand silently in his dark yard, and perform what can only be described as a ritual offering before disappearing inside without speaking to anyone. I have never done this in daylight. The crows are always already waiting when I pull in, so from the street it looks like I arrive and they simply... come to me. On command. In the dark.
One neighbor told another that I "communicate with them." A third asked if I was "into something." Nobody knocked on my door to ask me directly, which honestly raises more questions about what they thought the answer might be.
I tried to explain the science of it to my neighbor, crow intelligence, facial recognition, reciprocal gift giving behavior. He nodded very slowly, the way people nod when they are not going to change their opinion.
Last weekend his kid, eight years old, stopped me at the end of my driveway and asked if I was a wizard.
It was 11 PM. I had just worked eight hours of physical labor. I said yes.
The kid now leaves little piles of peanuts on my porch railing "to help." The crows eat them. This child believes he is assisting an actual wizard. I have no exit strategy.
TL;DR: Fed crows in my yard every night for two years without realizing my neighbors could see me. Now they think I run a cult, my neighbor's kid thinks I'm a wizard, and the crows have only made me look more suspicious over time.