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.
They have been around a long time, cunning……… aloha
Scoped air rifle. How quick we are to condemn our fellow planet dwellers to death. I hope the next dominant species look kindly on homo sapien ……
When people like you post comments like this, we know that it’s time for a revolution. A bloody one. And in the course of it– or shortly thrreafter–you and your kind will be eaten alive– quite literally. You epitomise cushy living and feeble-mindedness allowed to live beyond infancy. Sad.
What a frightening comment. Are you insane?
Buzzards are the only birds that don’t kill for their food
Only roadkill
A quick update: This morning they’d come back and destroyed the rest of the cushion but did no other damage and left the pockets alone. It was birds, for sure, from the dung they left. Very odd….
I reckon they like the shtank of yer arsehole, my good man. Eeewwwwww~ no accounting for taste after all, I guess!
Great post! I’ve heard stories of birds that trade with people who are holding a shiny candy or foil wrapper, and birds that hide their food, then there’s crows who remember faces.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/uw-professor-learns-crows-dont-forget-a-face/
I’d put my money on raccoons or oppossums, leaning on the side of the latter. Raccoons don’t generally show an interest in destruction where food isn’t a factor. I grew up in this area and the possums can get pretty nasty for no reason. Don’t know how long you’ll be staying in the area, but next Saturday, Sunday and Monday you can catch the moonbow at the falls during the full moon. It’s definitely worth seeing at least once as there aren’t many places with the right conditions. It would be worth going just to see the falls. Its a beautiful area. Keep up the good work.
My family farmed KY in the 1800s
still there near Cumberland river where
“How The West Was Won” was filmed on Patty’s Bluff.
KY was the Indians hunting grounds and
still full of outrageous wildlife including ticks and mosquitos
(ick) which are aplenty this time of year. I love this
blog! Have Fun…
That’s pretty interesting and completely unknown to me. It wouldn’t surprise me if raccoons were involved too. Many years ago in Muskegon, MI a raccoon that was being kept as a pet attacked and mutilated the face of a baby, I shudder to think of the pain that little girl went through because of her careless “parents.” She survived and, needless to say, the parents (rightly) lost custody of her but occasionally the local paper will run an update on her current condition. She’s endured dozens of surgeries to construct a crude face but I often think of that poor little kid. I’ve hated raccoons ever since…
By the way, Local Hero is one of my top 5 favorite movies.
Precisely why I chose it, Allan. I rarely run into someone that has even heard of it! It’s probably my favorite film ever. Top 3 for sure. And the soundtrack my Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame is absolutely magical.
oops…”by Mark Knopfler”…
Allan,
Any thoughts about multiple varmints jacking with your boat? Since it is on pavement you can’t see tracks but it could be a combination Raccoon’s along with the Buzzards. I have had Raccoons open complex locks (carabiner’s and swing hook with spring) to raid camp boxes I use for a kitchen when camping. They also easily got into the tub of butter and carry off frozen steaks. The only food they ate on site was eggs. Did the Buzzards crap all over the place as food comes out of them as quick as it goes in like ducks. I was not aware they were nocturnal either.
Good luck with the sleuthing,
Jim
Good point about the raccoons! I recall that they are smart and have opposable thumbs and so forth. It might could be them! I didn’t witness the crime, so maybe I should hold back on accusations. It’s all second hand from the bounty hunter with the pellet rifle…
Having seen a few videos of crows making tools to do retrieval tasks makes the term “birdbrain” rather complimentary. Some of them are way smarter than some people I know.
Oh, i know, and buzzards have a strange vibe to them on top…
Hi Allan,
It is easy to forget that we share the planet with some disarmingly intelligent animals. Some birds for e.g Crows, Parrots show highly developed problem solving abilities and, as has been observed in others, the ability to count at least up to seven (The Calculating Cormorants, P.Egremont, M.Rothschild). Avian intelligence includes rhythm recognition (beat induction), associative learning, observational learning, use of tools and in one European corvid( Magpies), self awareness. I also lived with a dog that painstakingly removed all my paper money, receipts, bank cards etc from my leather wallet before it destroyed it, leaving the entire contents pristine on my bed. Your boat episode is still a strange enough occurrence to make you stop and think; however, it is easily possible that it was the buzzards. Good to hear from you, hope you are well.
I know. Looking into buzzard behavior has educated my ass on all kinds of stuff. Birds are really interesting animals. I don’t know about the dinosaur theory…
The buzzards mistakenly thought you had caught a fish and thinking you may have hid it in a pocket where they sometimes find salmon eggs or other goodies and did their patented head swing trick on the zipper and, wah-lah, nuffin!
Sum-bitch human cheapskate! I’ll tear up yer fart smell, stingy bastard!
I was on a boat in Kodiak harbor where we were off loading some borrowed pots to the owner of them when a seasoned deckhand Starv’n Marv’n decided to show off his Kodiak Shamu trick with the spying on us, bull Sea lion. He put a herring in his mouth leaned over, and up Mr, Sea lion came, perhaps 9ft out of the water to snatch it out of Starv’n Marv’n’s mouth. He did this several times. No one else would.
Thing is, when the trick got old and he quit, the audience was in for a show! The huge beast rose out of the water and bit o’l Starv’n in the butt when he turned his back!
Dude didn’t even go to the doctor with a larger than thumb sized hole in his cheek.
Don’t feed wild animals.
Although, in my experience this kind of shit is from Ravens. Never seen a vulture do this but I haven’t been to Kentucky.