Los Doggies

There’s a new sound in town, the sound of murdered crows. You may have heard this sound in your kitchenette and come running outside, expecting to find a dead animal or broken-down automaton in your driveway, but it was just your friendly neighborhood Amazon delivery truck, trying not to run over any children below six feet.

Amazon has replaced all their backup beeps with this noise. It’s still in 4/4 like the old backup beeps, but now it’s a sound of indistinct pitch. Supposedly it’s safer to use a broadband noise as a warning signal because people are habituated to tonal beeps in simple waveforms, probably because of all the electronic music we listen to.

Would it also be safer to use an odd time signature as well? Since we are habituated to 4/4, something in 5/4 or 7/8 could save lives. The popular SOS melody played in Morse Code is in 7/8 time, and look at how well that works.

Maybe you heard this sound and thought it peculiar but not enough to summon you from the depths of your mancave with your craft beer and Disney+. Or if you’re an old Gen X boomer like me, you may have noticed it while keeping a side-eyed glance out the window all day.

So now you’ve heard it; there’s no reason to pay attention to it anymore. A crow is not being murdered. A sheep has not eaten a rose. It is the sound of Santa’s sleigh returning to megacorp HQ, like an Iranian drone decked out in FAA-compliant Christmas lights returning to its mothership.