This is Mischa, an aspiring guard dog who takes her job as her family’s resident “barker” very seriously. What she lacks in size and stature, she more than makes up for by using her voice.
“Ain’t nobody sneaking up on this Mama,” Shandelle, Mischa’s owner, wrote in a post. “She alerts every time anyone comes in the front door … or the back door … or down the stairs … or out of the bathroom.”
Recently, however, Mischa’s vocal superiority has been called into question.
The other day, Mischa and Shandelle were out enjoying the sunshine in their backyard when an oddly familiar sound struck their ears — but from an oddly unfamiliar place.
It was the sound of a barking dog, much like Mischa. The sound, though, was coming from high overhead.
Turns out, it wasn’t coming from a dog at all:
Sure enough, looking up, Mischa and Shandelle spotted the source — a wild crow perched on a branch in a nearby tree.
Evidently, the bird had heard Mischa’s barking enough times to have learned to mimic the sound himself. Now, he was back to regale the pup with her very own “song.”
“This crow is literally barking at my dog!” Shandelle wrote.
Here he is again:
It was an unusual thing to witness, no doubt. But crows, like parrots, are quite capable of mimicking sounds they hear in the world around them — including human language.
Learning that firsthand, even an expert barker like Mischa was left pretty much speechless. Hearing the crow, Shandelle was, too.
“Totally smart animals!” she wrote.
