Family Cathartidae

That’s my rig peeking out from the trees on the Cumberland (shot from my boat).

Some strange doings here on the Cumberland waterway in ol’ Ken-tuck. I bought a pontoon boat for rowing, river-riding, and fishing and have kept it on a ramp just a few yards from my campsite – I’m staying at a campground (rather than ‘dry’ camping, or ‘boondocking’) because it’s the only way to get close to the water here, the shoreline being very steep-to. (This area was dammed and flooded as in the movie Deliverance.)

Addendum: I was going to deal with that book I recently finished, Possible Minds, dealing with A.I., and which aggravated me. I’ll get to it…

My little boat has zippered pockets wherein I keep various fishing stuff, an anchor, lines, etc., right? Okay, yesterday, I noticed the gloves were lying on the ground by the ramp, not in the pocket I’d secured them in. I shrugged it off to another senior moment.

This morning I’m walking Gus and run into a campground guy in his golf cart and he pulls up, asking me if I’d looked at my boat today. I hadn’t.

A five pound anchor (and line) in the black bag, the gloves neatly placed below the ravaged seat. Smaller stuff (a knife, fishing lures, etc.) was also removed from various pockets.

‘The buzzards got to it,’ he says. I then notice he has a scoped air rifle on the seat. ‘They (the buzzards) are protected but I have a permit to shoot them if they start in with their nonsense.’ By ‘nonsense’ he meant vandalism.

I thanked the guy and walked down to the ramp to see what he meant. Truly, if he hadn’t told me ahead of time, I’d have assumed myself the victim of human vandals. My seat was torn to shreds, and… someone (how else to phrase it?) had opened my zipper pockets and removed the contents, including an eight pound anchor.

I’ve seen these buzzards, but not close up. They are huge, like up to six foot wing spans and nasty hooked beaks. But how did they… know about zippers? They hadn’t torn up anything but the seat cushion. The rest of the ‘damage’ was more like… they were curious to see what was in the pockets.

What doesn’t ‘match’ is the vicious damage to the seat and the undamaged stuff from the pockets. And, luckily, they ‘decided’ not to puncture the pontoons, which they could easily have done.

You all know I’m drawn to strange doings, and trying to explain them, especially if ‘rational’ explanations don’t cut it (the Mandela Effect being a good example). I gotta tell you, I got the shivers looking at what these birds had done to my little boat. I mean, if they are going to tear my seat cushion to shreds, why would they be… sort of dainty in their handling of my stowed gear? And from the look of the ‘crime scene’ they knew how to unzip a pocket without much experimentation.

Black buzzards are also called turkey vultures, family CatharidaeBeautiful in flight, no?

(Aside from Alfred Hitchcock) Rupert Sheldrake comes to mind, his morphic field stuff, especially his theory that ‘like’ organisms can learn from the experiences of past ‘like-organisms.’ I mean, I tend to doubt that if my boat had shown up on the buzzards’ radar a hundred years ago, they would have been able to open my zippered pockets at all, let alone so easily.

And why me? Had I offended them? Do they dislike Gus? Or was I a random target and do they understand how fucked up my species really is and were just ‘making a point’?

Anyway, I’m going to look into buzzard behavior today and will get back to you if I come across anything interesting. I’ll also try to get a good photo of one of the bastids, maybe catch him in the act of further vandalism.

Allan

What’s going on inside this bird’s brain, is what I want to know. (Note the beak, razor sharp and capable of serious torque.) I’ll do some research on these critters today and get back to you.

Hey, I appreciate the encouraging comments from last time. New people showed up, which means there may be still others out there lurking, and getting… something out of this.