He sowed the field in columns, walking west to east with the seed bag over his shoulder. One column a day, five days' work. By Friday the whole field was planted. Saturday morning he found the crows. They had worked the earliest-planted column — the strip he'd sown on Monday, where the seeds had been sitting longest and the soil was most disturbed. Picked clean, every last grain. The rest of the field, sown later and less disturbed, they hadn't touched. He replanted the stolen column and hung a scarecrow for good measure.