Someone may be eating crow

Sorry, Charlie ... we didn't know the rest of the story.

Charlie, you see, may be the real name of Blackie the crow, that infamous bird who nabbed parking tickets off car windshields in downtown Ogden in late 1969 and ended up getting himself arrested.

The saga of winged mischief was retold in a recent Standard-Examiner article -- and now it seems there's another chapter. Someone has come forward to claim the crow as a wayward pet. Actually, two different someones, but each, coincidentally, with a bird named Charlie.

Meet Marguerite Howell, of Uintah, who says the crow belonged to her father, and Ken Chambers, of Layton, who believes the crow belonged to his son, former NBA basketball star Tom Chambers.

Charlie: Chapter 1

Charlie was found as a fledgling and hand-raised by the late Bill Liptrap, says his oldest daughter, Howell.

Her dad taught the crow to perch on his finger and to take cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, Howell says. The bird occasionally flew into the house and swiped items off the kitchen table, and also learned to snatch dollar bills out of human hands.

Some of that paper money, along with coins and other objects, ended up in the crow's nest in a tree in the family's Ogden yard.

At the time, Liptrap lived on Grant Avenue, just around the corner from the car lot where Ogden's ticket-snatching crow was eventually caught. After the story of the bird's arrest hit the newspaper, his father climbed up to look at the nest and discovered several parking tickets there, says son Bud Liptrap in a phone interview from Twin Falls, Idaho.

"That's when he knew that was the same bird," he says.

Although folks speculated that the crow stealing the tickets was attracted to their bright yellow color, Bud Liptrap says, "That bird would take anything, no matter what color it was."

Bye, bye, black bird

His dad didn't step forward to claim Charlie because he thought he might be liable for the parking tickets, says Bud Liptrap, who was 19 at the time of the incident.

"We should have probably kept the parking tickets to prove it," Howell says.

The crow was never seen by the family again, much to his father's dismay, Bud Liptrap says.

"He hated to see that crow go -- he treated it like a little baby," the son says.

So once the jailed crow, known as Blackie, was set free after his incarceration, why didn't he fly back to the Liptraps' house?

The family story holds that the bird wasn't actually released, Howell says. She heard from a former employee at the car lot that the crow was sold.

Her father, who went on to have other pet crows and even a pet skunk, enjoyed taming wild things, says daughter Sherry Swift of Riverdale. He was fond of the name Charlie and gave that moniker to many of his birds.

A winged friend

Liptrap had another pet crow when he passed away in 1997, at the age of 69, Howell says. The bird sat in a tree outside the house the morning her father died, then flew away -- and never came back.

The day of Liptrap's funeral, a crow mysteriously appeared at the car of a granddaughter on her way to the service, Howell recalls. And there have been other encounters between family members and crows over the years.

"We often wondered if he came back as a bird. Just one of those things -- hey, I'm here," Howell says.

The story of Charlie the ticket stealer is "a story we've told all of our kids," Swift says. The family decided to talk about the crow now to set the story straight, her brother adds.

No matter that someone else is also claiming the bird, Bud Liptrap says: "Let them claim it if they want to; I know for 100 percent fact that was his crow."

Charlie: Chapter 2

This is a story of a 10-year-old boy and his ever-present companion during the summer of 1969, a crow named Charlie.

The tale began at a car lot on Wall Avenue, where employee Ken Chambers found and caught a crow, then took him home and gave him to his son, Tom.

"Everywhere Tom went, that crow went, riding on his head, riding on his shoulder," says Chambers.

If the bird wasn't perched on the boy, the crow would "follow" Tom around town by flying from treetop to treetop, or phone wire to phone wire. He even followed Tom to church and waited outside until the service was over, Chambers says.

Charlie would come when Tom called him, Chambers says, and ate pieces of bread dipped in milk or water from his hand. At night, he stayed in the family's garage.

Tom Chambers, now working for the Phoenix Suns in Scottsdale, Ariz., says in a phone interview that the crow made a lasting impression on him.

"He was a huge personality -- he was so funny," the former NBA player says. "The best pet I've ever had was Charlie; he was around for a summer but he was so unique and so cool."

Flying the coop

The story took a fateful twist when the Chambers family went on vacation and left the crow with a friend, who took it home.

"We come home and the crow's gone," Ken Chambers says -- and at the same time, the antics of an Ogden bird thief hit the news.

Unbeknownst to him, Ken Chambers says, his son went to downtown Ogden in search of his bird. Twice, Tom called Charlie off the Ogden Municipal Building, he says, and the crow came within inches of the boy, but got scared by curious onlookers and flew away.

After the crow was arrested, Ken Chambers says his son visited the car lot where the bird was captured to claim the bird, but he was turned down.

Kindred spirits

Ken Chambers says he's certain the arrested bird did belong to his now 50-year-old son.

"When Tom went down there and called him off of the building, there wasn't any doubt. ... Had he not gone down, I would say maybe it was some other crow," he says.

Tom Chambers says his pet was a wild bird and was always free to go because he didn't live in a cage.

As for whether the "arrested" bird was really Charlie, Tom Chambers says, "Am I positive? Yes, but no." One thing's certain, he says: "He came from a car lot -- he ended up on a car lot. That was just his MO."

After Tom visited the car lot, Ken Chambers says, "He resigned himself to the fact he wasn't going to get him back. He couldn't prove it was his crow."

His son has had a love for animals all his life, Chambers says. Today he has everything from llamas to buffalo at a ranch he owns near North Ogden.

But Tom and the crow had a special bond -- "It was just like they were one spirit," Ken Chambers says.

"He actually even named his favorite dog Charlie because of the fondness he had for that bird," he says.