Customers at a Costco in South Anchorage, Alaska, have been noticing that their shopping bags are a little lighter and it all has to do with some cunning birds that hang out in the parking lot looking for their next meal.
The Anchorage Daily News reported that ravens at the Dimond Boulevard store have been staking out the parking lot in search of their next steak dinner.
“We had bought a four-pack of filet mignon steak,” Marnie Jones told the newspaper about a shopping trip with her husband. “It was on the bottom of the cart, and he was pushing it through the bumpy snow.”
When Jones and her husband reached their vehicle, the meat slid onto the ground. Her husband turned his back to load groceries before realizing the pack had slipped. When they got home and put everything away, he noticed he was one steak short.
“He said, ‘Oh my God, after I picked up that pack of steaks, I saw a raven in the parking lot with a steak in his mouth,’" Jones said.
Another customer posted about her parents' run-in with the ravens on Facebook.
"Anyone else had an “experience” with the crows at Dimond Costco?" Kimberly Y. Waller posted on March 17. "My parents were minding their business after a shop and made it home with one less steak! The bird snatched it right out of the pack in the parking lot."
"Girllllllll they are vicious and calculating," commented one person. "Had 1 trying to distract me while the other went for my mini watermelons."
"Omg yes!" wrote another commenter. "My husbands cart got attacked in the parking lot and lost some short ribs. We returned the package and they said many people return meat due to raven attacks."
"'Say you are in Alaska without saying you are in Alaska,'" another person joked.
Another shopper reported that while she was buckling her baby into the car seat, a raven swooped in and stole some short ribs from her shopping cart. A year later, she again had meat taken by the birds -- this time it was pork ribs.
Matt Lewallen lost a single short rib from his order while packing groceries into the car. He said he believes the ravens are repeat offenders.
“They know what they’re doing; it’s not their first time,” Lewallen said. “They’re very fat so I think they’ve got a whole system there.”
TODAY Food reached out to Costco for comment but has not heard back.
According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the raven is a year-round resident of Alaska with a diet of grains, berries, fruit, small invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals and birds.
No word on whether they prefer a porterhouse or skirt steak.
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