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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Mother's Day has come and gone, here in the US, with my usual avoidance of anything related to it and ritual blocking of any business that emails me with MD promotions. This article, from Atlas Obscura way back in 2018, can be an exception. The Ultimate Guide to Bizarre Lies Your Mom Told You  Turns out mothers all over the world are telling a lot of the same outrageous fibs. One particularly famous parental fib involves avoiding tough conversations with your kids about death. Your dog gets run over by a truck, so you tell the kids he went to live on a farm where he'd be happy running around outside all the time. Well, that wouldn't have worked for us because we lived on a farm. And then they have the chutzpah to tell the kid that lying is bad and you shouldn't do it. Being a mom is a tough job, in large part because you just canât reason with small children. What you can do, however, is lie to them. In honor of Motherâs Day, we asked Atlas Obscura readers to send us the most outlandish white lies their mothers ever told them. As it turns out, moms all over the world are telling some wonderfully inventive lies. I doubt many of them are "inventive." They were probably passed down from their own lying mother, and so on. Some do, however, have modern twists. Many mothers still tell variations on the classics: If you make a funny face, it will stay that way; if you eat before you swim, youâll get cramps (or die); moms have eyes in the backs of their heads, and so on. Calvin and Hobbes did a great take on the funny face thing.  We couldnât include all of the fantastic entries we received, but weâve collected over 100 of our favorites below. Clearly, I won't be commenting on all of them here. âIn order to keep us kids from stealing pennies from water fountains, my mother told us the water was electrified and we would die.â âG. Johnson, Georgia Yeah, I would have still had to find out for myself. That's the kind of kid I was. âMom always knew when I was fibbing. She said she could tell because I had a black mark on my forehead. My grandma used to say the same thing. I would run to the mirror to see it, but it was never there. They said I couldnât see it because fibbers eventually go blind! I was scared to death.â âBatzion, Chicago, Illinois Would have been funnier if Grandma were blind. âEating the crusts of your bread will give you curly hair.â âRosie, Farnham, United Kingdom That seems to be a common one, coming from both UK and US sources. This is the first I've heard of it. Unlike apparently some kids, I never had a problem with bread crusts. Of course, the crap they passed off as "bread" (mostly Wonder brand) never had a real crust. My only hardline objection was I wouldn't eat the end slices of the loaf, and, as an adult, I still avoid them. But it hardly matters because I prefer real bread with firm, chewy crusts. âEating end of a bread loaf will help to grow breasts.â âElina, Latvia This is not why I avoided the ends, but it's hilarious. âI wanted a pet very badly and my mother told me that if I could put salt on the tail of a bird, Iâd be able to catch it. Hours were spent outside with the salt shaker and various homemade traps.â âAnne Falbowski, Colchester, Connecticut "Mission accomplished." -Anne's mom, presumably. âNot to play in rain puddles. Will get polio.â âMaryann Kelly, Boston, Massachusetts I don't know about polio, but I don't doubt you can catch something from playing in rain puddles. Tetanus, perhaps. âYou get canker sores if you pee off a bridge.â âStacey Henrikson, Rochester Hills, Michigan I had many questions, until I remembered that Stacey is also a boy's name. âMy mother told me if I bit my nails, a hand would grow in my stomach.â âMary Pagone, Los Angeles, California Lie? Yep. Brilliant and effective? Also yep. âDonât let your umbrella open inside the house or your mommy is going to die.â âNorton McColl, Sao Paulo, Brazil I expect Teenage Norton wasted many hours opening and closing an umbrella in the house, to no avail. âThat there was a man that traveled around town and he would chop off your middle finger if you used it to make crude hand gestures.â âG. Johnson, Georgia "But I need that one!" âTo deter my brother and me from eating my momâs delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies she told us the extra crunch to them were frog legs. Really they were walnuts.â âJen, California I should be offended on behalf of the French for that, but they already do "offended" so well. âNever go swimming in the pool/ocean after eating watermelon (common parental lie in Israel).â âSharon, Israel One wonders why it's watermelon in particular. I got the "don't go swimming after eating" warning, but for everything. âMy mom told me that sugary foods had little bugs on them, and the bugs liked to eat teeth, but if I brushed, then it would take them off.â âAdam Drew, Calgary, Canada I mean, as parental fibs go, that one's not far from the truth. âEverything on the ice cream truck is poison.â âJon Thierry, Dearborn, Michigan That one too. Delicious, delicious poison. âMy pet chickens and rabbits had gone âto the farmâ when in fact my former farmer Dad had turned them into dinner.â â Pat, Arlington Heights, Illinois Well? Someone's gotta keep therapists in business. âShe told us that if you kissed your elbow you would turn into a boy.â âTara Bryan, Flatrock, Newfoundland It's a little easier to do that nowadays. âFor as long as I can remember when we would drive to Rhode Island, she would tell me that the forest rangers used giraffes to prune the trees. I would always be looking in just the wrong direction and miss seeing one as we went by.â âEdward P. Steele, Connecticut That's a prank, and a really funny one at that. âMy mom told me that the gum spots on the sidewalk were actually blood from the kids who didnât look before crossing the road.â âAva Moody, Fort Worth, Texas And that one's brilliant. Now, I'm not saying that lying to kids is always a bad thing. (Spoiler: this week's Fantasy newsletter will be about lies.) But you gotta admit, some of them are meaner than others. Lots more at the link, no lie. |
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