Saturday, May 11, 2019

Turkey Vultures in repose









I recently promised in this space 600 blog posts about Turkey Vultures. Many of my readers were tremendously excited. Grape, a very old and dear friend sometimes mentioned in this blog, even wrote a comment in favor of Turkey Vulture writing! I haven't heard from Grape in months (though fairly speaking he hasn't heard from me either), so to hear from him on the subject of Turkey Vultures must mean he is especially enthusiastic about them! And he could be merely the tip of the iceberg Turkey Vulture-interest-wise.

So this morning I resolved to write about Turkey Vultures!

But great nature writers like myself and Edward Abbey and Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson and myself and Farley Mowat and John Muir and, wait, did I mention myself? well, we need to see nature in action in order to write our fascinating natural world material. So I had to go out to walk along the river to collect Turkey Vulture insights, anecdotes, and raw materials. My keen, tireless, and fearless observations of the Natural World would fuel an engaging bring-it-to-life prose that would briefly stem the relentless hunger out there for more and more and yet ever more lucid descriptions of soaring, red-headed Turkey Vultures, and finally I could take a break from writing about them, which I have now done in, let's see, roughly zero blog posts.

But the problem was that it was cold and rainy this morning. And, what with it being a rare day off from work for me, I refused to get dressed. I looked out the window instead. And there were clouds. There were things falling from trees. There were some ducks. I saw a hawk flying low over an unused golf course. But there were no Turkey Vultures. 

They stayed home too! 

They're probably there right now, in their little jammies.

Though for scientific purposes I should note this last part is just speculation.










2 comments:

  1. We have a cliff across the street, with a wonderful preserve with wonderful river bottom trails and all sorts of scrub and chaparral. The turkey vultures, as though knowing how majestic they are, enjoy spiraling over the this land, sometimes hundreds of feet in the sky, and then and skirting the chaparral and small oaks on the ridge top, sometimes coming within twenty feet of us who are rooted on land. And rarely, but it happens, they do sometimes land, and their pink faces appear more defined, almost human.

    Today I will likely be outside, since it's good for me and has all sorts of things like clouds and sunlight and turkey vultures. Also, it is not raining here, and though I am, like you, in my pajamas (is that what you meant by not dressed yet?) (Oh, but I only wear pajama bottoms--technically I sleep in a T-shirt), I will venture out and report on any turkey vulture sightings.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For three long days we have waited on you to report back from the field. Anticipation turned to anxiousness, turned to dread. We fear the worst. What happened down there in those wild river bottoms? What gift have you offered these mysterious, lovely, and wild birds?

      My god, man, if you're well send word!

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