Caws for celebration! Canuck the Crow lands gig
IT specialists probably think they’ve heard it all, but Loredana Udovicic has a new one for them: The crow stole my keyboard.
Well, not the entire keyboard, but the manager of food and beverage at the Pacific National Exhibition has had to repeatedly ask her IT department for a replacement keyboard after Canuck the Crow flew through an open window into her office and made off with one of the keys.
“IT is upset with me, I’ve lost three keyboards and they don’t believe me when I tell them why,” Udovicic said with a laugh.
“I’ve left the window open and Canuck has flown in, he rearranges things on my desk and then plucks a key off my keyboard. He’s quite funny, actually.”
Canuck has been visiting the PNE ever since he learned to fly a couple of years ago. Staff began treating him like an honorary employee.
This year, the Exhibition decided to make him a full-time employee, fitting since tens of thousands of youngsters got their first paying job at the PNE over its 107-year history, according to the fair.
Almost daily, Canuck has been job-shadowing PNE and Playland employees, from candy attendants, cashiers, sweepers, maintenance crew and gardeners, said Stacy Shields, the PNE’s vice-president of human resources.
Now, he’ll get a starting salary of $12.27 an hour, which will be donated to the Night Owl Bird Hospital in support of the World Parrot Refuge, Shields said. It will work out to about $1,000 for the summer gig.
Night Owl is the Kitsilano hospital where Canuck was cared for after being viciously beaten by a soccer dad with a flagpole this spring.
Canuck’s appearances cause amusement and bemusement, Udovicic said.
“He’s like a little human, he just walks right in the front door,” she said. “Not fly, he walks in.
“As soon as he enters a building the cameras come out, the locals recognize him and want a photo. The tourists run away.”
Recently Canuck dropped in at an eighth birthday party being held at Triple O’s Restaurant at the PNE.
“He came into the dining room, visited with the birthday guests, the little girl was so happy because she follows him on Facebook and thought it was a thrill to have him visit her at her birthday party.”
And, as anyone knows who has followed Canuck’s adventures on Facebook — @thecrowandI — he likes picking up things that don’t belong to him and flying off.
“He’s not a nuisance, he’s not harmful, he’s sweet,” Udovicic said. “He likes anything shiny.
“And the colour red. He never takes a blue pen but takes red pens all the time.”
A thousand jobs are still available to that other biped species — humans — Shields added.