I put one last coat of red paint on the rock, rolling it to the ground with the others. With a
green splotch at the top and black specks for seeds, it looked almost like a strawberry. It was
hardly a high-tech solution – least of all for the year 2045 – but if it worked, then I’d happily
paint a hundred more.
   I looked over my shoulder, looking to see if the crows were watching me from the tree line.
Would my gambit work again? They were fiercely intelligent, likely the most admirable adversaries I’d ever faced, and I kept thinking my tricks would stop working. I hoped they could sense my respect, of course — I grew a patch of wild corn exclusively for them. But as tasty as corn was, it couldn’t hold a candle to my strawberries. With all the changes we’d made, though,
we needed this crop – and I needed the crows to leave something for the people.
   I could see my wife on the porch, laughing at me from the farmhouse. She always thought
my rock painting was a bit ridiculous — even on the year she finally admitted it worked. This
year, though, she thought it was particularly silly. And it may well be. In years past, we had acres of strawberries to protect. Now, the fields were ninety percent covered in solar panels. And while agrivoltaics weren’t in and of themselves crow-proof, we’d equipped the solar panels with little spinning mirrors and evil eyes to keep the birds from getting too comfortable rooting around in the shade of the panels where the fruit would grow.
Personally, I was more concerned about the plots the panels wouldn’t protect, including a
thirty-yard perimeter on each side of the field. All in, the perimeter amounted to about an acre —and some five thousand plants to protect. And that meant rocks. You see, birds hate to peck hard things. If you throw some red-painted rocks down before the fruit shows, they learn not to peck red things in the fields. More importantly, it fit the spirit of the farm. We’d left behind all the chemical warfare of the past — with its runoff, algal blooms, and carcinogens — and replaced it with purely psychological warfare.
   Don’t forget either that I really liked those crows — I grew them their own wild corn, after
all. While I certainly winced every time I imagined pecking a rock myself — I knew well enough
how poorly my teeth handled popcorn — anything was better than poisoning our friends. Even
if, to my wife’s dismay, it left our farm full of props…
   Beside the rocks, there were rubber snakes to scare off squirrels, sheer curtains hanging over
a few rows of wine grapes, and more than a few birdbaths in case thirst was their main
motivation for attacking our fruit. My wife, of course, had her own ideas. She was adamant about “boots on the ground,” a battalion of cats she’d hired to do battle with the crows.
   As if on cue, one of our seven cats approached, meowing as he rubbed against my leg.
   “Hey, Bud,” I said, making sure I didn’t have paint on my hands before I stooped down to
scratch his ears.
   Bud was a true soldier. Built like a tank the size of two cats, he was always ready for battle.
His dark brown caot was almost the same shade as the soil, which allowed him to army crawl
around the farm year-round as he hunted for enemy combatants.
   I didn’t begrudge him his talents, of course, especially when he got a rat. I just didn’t want
him to be too successful. In the old days, they said housecats used to kill a billion birds each
year, a horrifying statistic more suited to a genocide than a war. But I think we’d found a
balance. We’d trained the cats to stay out of the forest, and by keeping the birds out of the fields, I could ensure the cats didn’t have too many opportunities.
    And that was the other crucial component of our farm’s philosophy. After centuries of
fighting Mother Nature — and nearly killing ourselves in the process — we and all the other
farms in the area were finally following the Thirty Percent Rule. As the theory went, humans
could manage to live on a huge portion of the earth’s surface, so long as we left thirty percent of
it wild. That portion would act as a sink for biodiversity, ensuring we didn’t threaten the fabric of nature that supported the life of everything we held dear.
   For us, that meant the huge forest at the back of the property. It had started off smaller, but
we kept adding trees every year — sometimes with help from the Reforestation Corps — and by
now it was a big, beautiful expanse, one that would only grow by the time our short lifespans on
this land were finished.
   “Cree-awwwww” a crow called from the tree line.
   “Sorry, guys!” I called, turning to wave. “Enjoy the corn!”
    I went back to the farmhouse with Bud on my heels. We might lose a few battles this year, but I would enjoy the fight, especially if the only thing getting hurt was a handful of strawberries.