Why Has This Birdbath Become Like Scenes from a Horror Movie?

Once is bad enough. Twice is a real problem. We're well beyond three. Over the last five days, something has changed in our backyard and I've gotta tell you, it's not a change for the better.

Last weekend, I noticed the water in the birdbath above was murky. I thought to myself, 'it's been raining quite a bit, why is that...' About that time is when I saw it. There were "things" in there. Things that shouldn't be. A large bone and, uh, without being too graphic... a couple of feet.

Julie and I cleaned up the mess and the next morning... the water again had, shall we say, a deceased inhabitant. This time there was a large portion of a rabbit. Some of it, anyway. At this point, we're alarmed and clean it out again.

Tuesday morning, I check the birdbath before leaving for work. All good. Twenty minutes later, Julie calls. No longer good. A second rabbit has appeared. What in the...

Last night, I dumped the birdbath before dark and cleaned and filled it this morning for the above photo. Julie did some studying last evening. We know there's an owl that appears almost every night just a house away. Likely not it, her research showed. So that hawk that we've seen in one of our trees and in our next-door neighbor's recently? Probably not. Apparently, it's one of these characters:

The American crow. Julie found a story on Backyard Wildlife Connection that says,

"If American crows frequent your backyard, chances are you have witnessed them dipping food into a birdbath... The most widely held theory is it is done to soften their food... I cannot see how this explanation explains why American crows also place dead animals such as birds and mice, animal bones, snails and even bits and pieces of roadkill in birdbaths."

Now that we know the American crow is the likely culprit, does anyone have any proven ideas on how to stop the horror movie-like insanity? Other than putting the birdbath away. Forever.