If believed in portents and prophecies, which I do not, I might be worried, but I do believe in wonders, and so yesterday, pulling into the driveway, when I saw a fledgling black vulture hop from roadkill to our fence and not take off, I stopped every other vagrant thought in my head and just let the moment unfurl.
Black vultures have a grayish small head whose feathers look like scales. It reminded me of a old man’s head, one who had chosen a buzz cut, but whose rich brown eye was rounded by a silvered circle. The beak was formidable, the kind of drop-blade you might see on a gull. It looked directly at me and hopped back to the road to continue feeding. Cars sometimes roar through this spot. I stepped out to the road. It rose to the fence. When I moved to the roadkill, it dropped into our yard and did a kind of Groucho Marx slouch away on off-white bare legs. I picked up the remnants of the road kill, a dribbly leg, red meat, fragments of bone and fur, and came back into the yard and walked a wide circle around it. It walked away but did not spread its wings. It turned to look at me. I put the kill on the grass and backed away. It watched me, genuinely unafraid.
When I was a distance it deemed safe for itself, it walked over to the meat and fed for over a minute, swallowing whole gobs of stuff, but delicately. It did not appear uncomfortable. I stood quite still about 12 feet away. When it finished, it walked to the fence, vaulted to a post, and scratched and preened. It continued to do so even when I came within 6 feet, a sssslow step by half step process that might have taken me 3 minutes.
It dropped to the road again. I came around the fence and and slowly approached it, raising my arms slowly and extending them as if they were wings and saying, “Shooooosh, Shoooooshh, Shooooosh” until it brought its wings out, took 3 or 4 hops and pushed off, flapping powerfully, until it caught the barest current and tilted east, circled tightly and rose over the trees obscuring the western fields and was gone.
I had sung to two dozen children that morning and was greeted by this upon my return. A day rescued by children and a vulture. I will be thankful.
