Day of the Vulture

My son, his friend & I decided to clamber around on some boulders in search of a famous local cave - Dead Man's Cave. While we were wandering across the boulders, at one point my son stopped and jumped back. A large bird was coming out of a small cave right next to him and below where I was. All 3 of us watched warily as the large black bird audibly flapped its huge wings and awkwardly climbed into the air. The turkey vulture stayed nearby and we kept away from its cave which it was obviously guarding from above. Soon we noticed shadows and looked up to see perhaps a half dozen large black birds circling. I thought the concerned mom had called for reinforcements and wondered aloud how she had gotten a signal up there when my cell phone wasn't working. While my first inclination was to take this as a threat and perhaps an omen of our impending demise, I soon realized that the others were hawks, not vultures.

We eventually found a cave, which turned out to be not the one we were looking for as we were incorrectly informed by some local teens who apparently had hung out there before. I slid down into a small room and then slithered feet first into a small opening in the lower corner under the entrance. Stupidly believing our misinformed friends, I wrongly assumed that others had gone where I was going so I certainly could too. Soon I realized that I was stuck. After trying all kinds of twists and feeble attempts at pulling myself out, I was able to raise my left leg up to the ceiling of the room below and push enough to get my torso up onto the next shelf and from there I could finally pull and push myself back out.

When we got back home I checked the article and saw the picture of the cave I had been stuck in. It was called Spider Cave and had I been successful in dropping into the lower room, I would have found all sorts of spiders and centipedes. So my luck continues.

Later in the evening while returning from walking the dog, I noticed a large black bird swoop down into the edge of the forest near our neighbor's home. Then another one did the same. My curiosity was aroused as we neared the corner and I crossed the street and proceeded to crash through the woods towards where all the large birds were. As I got closer, I realized there was a dozen of these huge black birds in the trees above me. I counted and found there were 16. And, once again, they were vultures. I thought for sure I was going to find a dead cow or human when I arrived at the base of the trees they were in. Another one rose up from the ground as I crested the last small rise. Once again, as I had earlier, I heard the loud flapping of its wings as it lumbered into clumsy flight.

I stayed below the trees for awhile, watching nervously as one or another of them would fly to another branch overhead, sometimes with a call that almost sounded like a low dog bark. There might have been a smaller bird on the ground below, but nothing that I thought would satisfy the appetites of this many large winged beasts.

I hurried home to get my camera and came back in the car to take pictures on the way to pick up my son. Vultures seemed to be the theme for the day.