Adam Birch is an old man who lives in a cabin in the woods by Ravensburg. He came from Brooklyn during the Prohibition, and had been a very successful alcohol smuggler. Eventually, he begins to tell people he was born in Ravensburg but had moved to Brooklyn at an early age — a fact about which the townsfolk are skeptical. A local newspaper publishes an alert that the county will pay twenty-five cents per crow's head — the birds, the advert states, have become a pest to farmers. While nobody else pays this advert much notice, Adam Birch sets to work. One evening, the people of Ravensburg are startled to hear an enormous noise somewhere nearby. The next day, Adam stops by the mayor's office, expecting to cash in on his bounty. He brings city officials to his meadow and presents to them the carcasses of over 2,000 crows. Adam had devised a system of bombs which he'd set off in various trees to murder the birds. Several government officials present Adam with his bounty check, but then proceed to lay out a slew of infractions which Adam has incurred as a result of the bird bombing. Adam's resulting fines equal the sum of Adam's bounty, and the officials promptly take their check back. Adam returns to his cabin and collects the parts of crows which remain in his field. He turns the skeletons into various macabre knick-knacks and sells these to the townsfolk along the road. He also hands out a pamphlet to all who stop at his stand which informs them of the history of these artifacts: Adam Birch's grandfather, an early resident of Ravensburg, massacred a huge number of crows and thus saved the farmers from the pests. When Birch dies, this entirely fake history is printed in Birch's obituary. The townsfolk, when they speak of him, remember his long lineage and his grandfather who saved the town from the crow onslaught. In this way, Birch successfully rewrites the past.