By Charlie Carey

A feathered friend or a thieving foe? A resident raven at Cypress Mountain Resort is causing a stir online after being caught on camera unzipping a skier鈥檚 backpack before flying off with its contents recently.

Shared on the 鈥楬iking British Columbia鈥� Facebook group by Turguy Tugayli on Dec. 29, the 16-second video shows the super-intelligent bird calmly going about its business, in a sea of piled-up backpacks next to the top of Lions Express chairlift.

鈥淚t was almost like an inspection. He went to check a couple bags,鈥� Tugayli said.

鈥淎nd I鈥檓 like, 鈥楾his bird is up to something here.鈥� I was actually shocked at how smart he was. He tried pulling the zippers up, and then when I started recording, by then the zipper was already open.鈥�

Receiving some harsh words on Facebook after being unable to intervene quickly enough, Tugayli said he was 鈥渏ust not expecting the bird to actually steal such a big bag and fly out.鈥�

鈥淚 guess I could have intervened, but I had like a second, this all happened in like 15 seconds.鈥�

Confirming that it would indeed be a raven and not a crow, Cypress sales and marketing director Joffrey Koeman said that they have heard of a lot of stories of this happening 鈥� most notably during the Vancouver Olympics.

鈥淲e have a ton of ravens on the mountain and they are all very smart!鈥�

During the ongoing pandemic it appears the rules at Cypress are: Keep calm, wash your hands 鈥� and apparently 鈥� watch out for ravens.

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