By Tim Binnall
A British homeowner hopes to get to the bottom of a bizarre mystery wherein crows continuously leave cooked chicken drumsticks in his bird bath. The confounding case reportedly began two years ago when Andy Purvis noticed the food being deposited in the backyard of his home in St Ives. Over time, the drumstick drops have increased in frequency with the crows now leaving around five per day. Lamenting the problem "has progressively gotten worse," an exasperated Purvis explained that the birds use the water to soften the food they later return to eat. While he knows why the drumsticks keep appearing in his backyard, the question of where they are coming from has left the homeowner scratching his head.
"At first we just thought it was people just putting the odd carcass out," Purvis explained, "but it's too much now to be just coming from family homes." To that end, he observed that "some of the drumsticks are pretty meaty," leading him to theorize that "it must be coming from nearby." That said, although St Ives is a fairly small community, the homeowner's attempts at determining the specific source for the drumsticks, including asking for tips on social media, have proven futile. As such, Purvis opted to go public with the puzzling mystery in the hopes that "highlighting the issue will shame the person or business to manage their food waste more responsibly."