The Vultures Knew

Here’s the typical Ohio Valley summer. The sun shines, and it rains a little in the spring, just enough to make you think you’ll be able to grow a good garden. Fooled, you throw yourself into your vegetables. They grow wonderfully. You get some lettuce, some beans. The sun keeps shining. You get a tomato or two. It shines until everything dries up and gets crispy. It keeps shining. A cloud doesn’t pass over its face again until after the first frost. Then, it rains and rains and rains, like a waiter who says, as you’re paying the check, parched and furious, "I’m sorry, you asked for more water? I was busy at another table. Here’s your water."

In the fall and winter, it’s gray all the time. Tough weather for turkey vultures, who like a good sunny day and some thermals to lift them high above the hills. So it was with interest that I watched them circling, swooping, beating their great sable wings low over my yard for three days running, defying the low ceiling and soggy skies. Eight in all. There must be something good down in the woods, I thought, or they wouldn’t bother getting off their roost in this weather.

Even though the weather is usually iffy in mid-October, The Big Sit is probably our favorite organized birdwatching event. It falls just at the time of year when we start to cocoon, with sweaters and soups and oatmeal cookies. We invite friends and acquaintances to our home to sit for all or part of a twelve-hour shift atop our birdwatching tower (which, for those of you who don’t know, tops our house), simply identifying every bird that flies by, trying to get a bigger list of species than last year. We talk and laugh and act silly and eat, and try to outdo each other with outlandish sightings. It’s perfectly tailored to our relaxed (slothful) approach to birding.

The neat thing about the Big Sit is that, when you sit looking over the landscape for twelve hours on an October day, you can see almost anything. This year was the best we’ve ever had—the biggest list, the best friends joining us from afar, and the most amazing sightings. Fifty red-tailed hawks, maybe 200 turkey vultures, a harrier. Red-headed woodpeckers. A small, distant flock of what could only be snow geese appeared, then disappeared, chimerae on the horizon. At dusk, six black-crowned night herons, species #178 for our property, rowed by against a burnished orange backdrop. We whooped, we crowed, we slapped high fives all around. But we weren’t done. It was almost completely dark when a great blue heron flapped over, barely visible, but voicing its distinguishing croak. #61 for the day.

"Hoot, Zick, hoot!" Bill urged, and I wound up my barred owl imitation. Before I’d made all eight hoots, one, two, then a third barred owl answered from the valleys to the north and south. 62 species, a new Big Sit record for our sanctuary and home. Great birds, great company, and great food. The perfect birdwatching event.

Bill takes the Sit seriously, enough so that he drove straight from New York City the night of October 12 in order to be in the tower at dawn on the 13th. Since he was traveling this year, it was up to me to assemble the snacks. I will confess I neglected to buy the caffeinated cola, nacho cheese flavored Doritos, French onion flavored Lay’s, and flame-orange cheese puffs that he’d scribbled on the shopping list, and which he considers part of the essential Big Sit diet. It’s not that I’m a food snob, but I make a point of whizzing by the snack and soda aisles, and I couldn’t bring myself to buy those things. I would make Healthy Food for our guests, and Bill wasn’t here to argue. I’d cook all day Saturday, and be ready to bird all day Sunday. Hang the Cheetos.

A chicken stew, with carrots, white kidney beans, kale from the garden, topped with fresh Parmesan. Fresh-baked baguettes. Oatmeal raisin cookies (an essential). Who could pine for cheese puffs? I went down to the basement refrigerator to collect my stewing chicken, bought and stored four days earlier. And it was not there. Hmm. I know I bought a chicken. I’ll check upstairs again. And I went off to other tasks, meaning to check later.

A pile of mail by the door beckoned. I’d drive it out to the box, quickly, before the mailman came. I opened the garage door and noticed a foul odor. Phew, I’ve got to take that garbage to town. I opened the door of my Explorer, and reeled backward. Something died in here!

Gingerly, I lifted the back hatch and saw the small white grocery bag, forgotten, in the near corner. My chicken, its thick plastic wrapping swollen to near-bursting, had been stewing in the warm garage for the past week. Chickens almost always leak. I owe a love letter to Tyson, because this one hadn’t, not a drop. The damage was purely olfactory.

I eased the bag out by its handles, as one might lift a live grenade, or a live trap with a very angry skunk inside. I backed out of the garage, holding the noisome bolus at arm’s length. Four vultures trained knowing eyes on me as I carried it ceremoniously out to the wooden post in the middle of our meadow, where I leave freezer-burned treasures and the occasional roadkill for their enjoyment.

I retreated to the house to wash up, and laugh. I dug some chicken legs out of the freezer and started them stewing for the soup. The vultures circled and tilted low over the Explorer, which was airing out, its doors and windows ajar, in the driveway. All eight of them, the same pack that had been trying all week to tell me where that chicken was.