Enchanted with the view
As a child I would spend many afternoons lying on the warm earth and watch the broad winged buzzards as they appeared to hang motionless for hours at a time. Or marvel in their grace as they ascended in slow spirals toward the earth. At times they appeared to float on the wind and suddenly they would swing low to the tree tops. They could skim, drift, glide, soar and sail which created such a spectacle that it kept me lying motionless for long periods of time. My seemingly lifeless form once caused one to swish in closely and check my status as a prospective meal.
Close up this critter was no longer a thing of beauty and grace. Their naked heads and hooked bills had the appearance of evil. Their feathers were ragged and nasty, the turkey vulture was a totally revolting brute. The whole experience reminded me of an old Persian Proverb: “The lovliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the imagination.”
But never mind their appearance, they provide an indispensable service as garbage men. In addition to carrion and garbage, vultures will occasionally take a weak or injured animal. And it has finally been proven that turkey vultures do find at least some of their diet by scent! Their name, vulture, is derived from the Latin Vellere which means “to tear.”
As loathsome as all this may seem, there is an unspoken code in the Ozarks that protects them. It is considered bad luck to kill a buzzard which brings to mind a tale that has turned into a legend in the hills. Vance Randolph recorded a story about two young boys that set a steel trap beside a dead lamb, hoping to catch a wolf. If they could kill a wolf they could take the scalp to the courthouse and collect twenty dollars for a bounty. But when the boys came back one Sunday morning there was a big buzzard in the trap, and he was caught by one leg. So they just tied a little bell around his neck and turned the old stinker loose.
About three miles away was a young fellow cutting sprouts. Everyone told him not to break the Sabbath by cutting sprouts but he did it anyway. All of a sudden he heard a bell ringing and he looked up to see a lot of buzzards. They were circling around and that bell kept on ringing like a fire engine. As the buzzards swung lower the young man was scared witless. He dropped his grubbing hoe and headed for the dense timber. He had heard how buzzards chased sinners and he must have had something on his conscience other than cutting sprouts on the Sabbath.
He found his way to the meeting house and from then on he attended services every time it was held. He got himself properly baptized in the creek and went plumb hog wild on religion. He would get up and testify how the Lord sent birds with bells so he would see the light. People tried to tell him about the boys that belled the buzzard but he swore it was a sign from heaven. He finally went to preaching out in Oklahoma and the last anyone heard he was still telling of the great flock of birds with bells.
In case anyone thinks this was a figment of Randolph’s colorful imagination, as I first did, I found in a 1905 edition of our local paper a story about a belled buzzard. It was a story reprinted from the Freeburg Enterprise. “The belled buzzard has been seen again. For some days past a buzzard with a bell jingling about his neck has attracted considerable attention among the farmers and others in Freeburg and vicinity. They observed he must have been wearing the bell for sometime, as it didn’t seem to bother him. In fact he seemed quite proud of his ornament.”
Doing a little research on these feathered creatures I discovered that when they nest they lay their eggs in a cave, rock crevices, vacant houses, stumps or hollow tree trunks. Which lends credence to a story by George Sutton which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly many years ago. It was titled “An adventure with a turkey vulture.”
He tells about his encounter with a momma buzzard and her offspring in a hollow log. He was a young boy exploring the woods as all young males do. He happened upon a long hollow log in the woods, instinctively curious he checked it out for snakes or possibly a wildcat waiting to spring upon him. The dim interior revealed a female vulture with a baby no more than a few hours old. It was downy white and its head and legs were a naked gray. He said its infant eyes had no expression. What follows in the story line is his adventure of crawling the length of a twenty foot hollow log. In the escapade he encounters a nest of mice and becomes so wedged that he thinks he shall never extract himself safely from this predicament. In the end he encounters the Mother and Babe and drags them from the log.
Outside the log he views his captives and sees that the little white baby seemed so friendless and the Mother’s eyes not only seemed hard and fierce but also frightened. He placed the pair back inside the hollow log and trudged wearily home. He had discovered close-up that he was a little disillusioned, just as I had been so many years ago. We had both discovered the real truth in Thomas Campbell’s quote: “Distance lends enchantment to the view.”
