Nature Is Gross Sometimes

For the past couple of weeks, we've been having lots of big birds flying around - vultures, hawks, etc. Even crows - they are bigger in real life than I thought they were. Vultures are one of nature's undertakers. They clean up dead stuff like road kill. They are not afraid of my driving either. They will stand there eating the possum or raccoon or whatever until I have to slow down or risk hitting them. Then they will calmly hop/walk to the side of the road, watch me drive by and then happily return to their food until the next car shows up.

Vultures are big, heavy birds. I was standing at the end of the driveway waiting for Kirsten to get off the bus and there were vultures trying to land in the tree across the street. Apparently vultures picture themselves as light little chickadees or sparrows, because they'd land on branches and the branches would DIP and the tree would sway. Some of the branches would break and the vulture would fall a little and flap its wings to try to land on another branch. The tree ran out of branches and they all took off and landed in the field.

Getting to why Nature Is Gross Sometimes, one of the vultures was able to scrape his meal off the road and fly away with it. Once again, its skewed body image was a downfall. The vulture couldn't quite clear the electric fence and ended up dropping its dinner on the fence. Guess what? Vultures don't like touching electric fence any more then any other animal (or person!).