Friday Musings: Carrion Dreams

I like to consider myself a well-rounded individual with lots of different interests, but I do admit that I occasionally develop certain preoccupations that might be considered a bit left of center or even downright odd. My kids like to say that I’m like a podcast app where listeners select a topic and I then provide all the details of my research and empirical data. Recent episodes range from top beauty creams to keep your forearms looking youthful, to the countless benefits of a new sound app called Endel that will help you have the best night’s sleep ever, to the reasons why avocados may just be the perfect food. As you might expect, cocktails and astrology are the largest tabs on my touch screen with far too many episodes to count. In the last year or so, one of my most recently played podcasts has been about vultures. Yes, you are reading that correctly. Where on earth did this interest come from? Well, let me tell you a story. As the youngest member of my family, I have been without almost all of my older relatives like grandparents, aunts and uncles, as well as my own parents for quite a while now. They are all resting peacefully in the same cemetery, and when I would go to visit them I had a favorite spot where I would park my car and could have a conversation with all of them at once. It was next to a very pretty line of those tall tombstones that always seem to have strong Italian names on them like Garibaldi or Lanza. As a person whose 23andme profile indicates 97% Italian ethnicity, it’s okay for me to say that. As I was sitting there one day offering up some prayers to whoever was listening, an enormous black vulture came and landed on one of the stones with his wings spread out in what I later learned is called the horaltic pose. He was basking in the sun. What a photo opportunity, right?? Believe me, I tried, but I was so startled that I ended up snapping an absolutely lovely shot of my dashboard and a flash of blue sky. My new friend looked at me with a disdainful scowl, and my chance at capturing the best photo ever flew off in a powerful whoosh of black feathers. I was left wondering if he’d been real or just a figment of my imagination. In that moment, my fascination with vultures began.
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