Who would imagine a job description that began and ended with , “looking after ravens”? Or that a Ravenmaster would find so much fun in it that he would write a book about his wards, the ravens? Indeed, truth is stranger than fiction and we have a book by Christopher Skaife where he describes seven ravens in intriguing detail.
“Breakfast of champions - a plastic bin full of slightly gory mice and a choice rat or two.” If that sounds a little unappetizing you are not to blame. It is the delicacy being offered to the ravens living in the Tower of London. Skaife in his memoir, Ravenmaster, tells you these ravens are famous. Famous because, myth has it that if they leave, the tower would crumble to dust and a terrible harm would befall the kingdom. This gives Sakife’s job a national significance in England.
Skaife says,” I have on one occasion - or maybe two or three - swung on the spire of the tower up there trying to catch a naughty raven.” They are however free to fly around. "There are legends and myths associated with the ravens…I don't want the ravens to fly off, otherwise I'll be out of a job. So what I actually do is that I'll trim up the odd flight feather or two." He does not like to say he clips their wings!
The man on whom the very existence of England depends says there are seven ravens living at the tower right now - dominant pair Erin and Rocky, three younger males - Gripp, Harris and Jubilee, Poppy, the baby, and Merlina, the queen, who has her own domain in one of the Tower's historic houses.
It is officially declared that the ravens have been around for hundreds of years. King Charles II is said to have installed them there, perhaps for a bit of luck after London was hit by a one-two punch of plague and fire in the 1660s, “Unofficially, the ravens haven't been here that long. We can't really date the evidence of the ravens back any earlier than the 1880s, so that would make it a kind of a later Victorian myth. So what we kind of think is the ravens were brought in because the ravens were made popular by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe. And ravens were popular to have as pets. Charles Dickens had a pet raven, as well. In fact, he had three peravens.”
Skaife says ravens can be extremely smart. And Merlina is one of the smartest. She's fond of playing pranks on visitors by stealing their snacks or, when she's especially bored, playing dead, “I never get bored of watching what ravens do and how they go about their lives. They're just incredible. You just never know what they are going to do. So you always got to be on your toes when you're looking after them.”
Caging them at night, freeing them at daybreak and feeding them in between is thus not the whole story!
