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Tue, Jul 8, 2025

4:53am EDT

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Carrion Luggage

by Robert Waltz

Rated: 18+ · Book · Opinion · #2336646

Items to fit into your overhead compartment

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.

Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

Lazy Writer est 4/24/2008

about 11 hours ago
In response to "Curiosity Killed the Categories"

I never liked math either. But wound up using it all the time as an office administrator. Thank goodness for computers..calculators and adding machines!

JACE

about 21 hours ago
In response to "Curiosity Killed the Categories"

I never liked math much; thought of it as a necessary evil in life. But I wound up using math daily in my vocation as a woodworker. For more than 30 years I used math to convert inches to centimeters, and vice versa, geometry for selected projects, and general math in all estimates.

I never considered using math for anything beyond my little world.

1 Like

🌖 HuntersMoon

a day ago
In response to "He Said, Archly"

Spoken like a true engineer.

Civil engineers always pave the way for great ideas!

1 Like

Lazy Writer est 4/24/2008

Jul 5, 2025 at 1:25pm
In response to "Twongue-tisters"

Very funny most i knew but several i did not.

2 Like

Wordsmitty ✍️

Jul 5, 2025 at 1:20pm
In response to "Twongue-tisters"

The answer line for Woodchucks: A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

2 Like

🌖 HuntersMoon

Jul 5, 2025 at 10:40am
In response to "Twongue-tisters"

Brought a smile from the memory vaults.

1 Like

WakeUpAndLive~Petra's Vacay

Jul 5, 2025 at 10:22am
In response to "Twongue-tisters"

Fun read. My tongue got twisted indeed trying.

2 Like

Dave Ryan

Jul 4, 2025 at 8:33pm
In response to "Book It, Not Done"

I've has three different approaches over the years.

A/ I gave up on Vernon God Little within the first dozen or so pages. Cloud Atlas was another one I bailed out on fairly early in the proceedings.

B/ I manfully slogged through more than half of Ghormenghast before deciding another single page could rob me completely of the will to live.

C/ I masochistically slogged my way through the entirety of James Ellroy's LA Quartet (simply because LA Confidential had been such a good movie) but I will never, ever read another work of his short of being forced at gunpoint. The Count Of Monte Cristo was another tiresome endurance test, as was Dracula.

From now on, I'm going to go with option A—if I'm not getting into it within the first few chapters (or 50 pages max for a big thick doorstop of a book) then I'm done, and I don't care how big a reputation the author or the book might have. Life is too short.

2 Like

Aiva Raine

Jul 4, 2025 at 7:27pm
In response to "Book It, Not Done"

I didn't try reading most of the other books on that list, but the two I tried multiple times to read and couldn't finish were Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities. I know they both have good stories, but I just could not finish. The writing style was sooooooo boring and hard to read. I opted for the movies instead.

The other book series I gave up on starting with book two was the Game of Thrones. While I loved the Game of Thrones TV series (except for the last season); I have little patience for long, drawn-out epic saga type fiction where they spend oooodles of time on describing the scenery and endless genealogical back stories. It bores me to death and once I start skipping entire pages of a book, the death knell has already sounded.

Give me a tight, fast paced Jack Reacher book by Lee Child instead. (up until he had his brother take over-then the series just wasn't the same). And lest you think I don't like epic fantasy- I LOVE LOVE LOVE He Who Fights With Monsters series. All 500-700 pages of each book, although I admit there are a few parts where I sometimes skim a paragraph or two and the editor in me really wishes Shirtaloon would proof the books a tad bit more before he prints them.

I love Dungeon Crawler Carl too, although Jason Asano keeps my interest more than Carl. Jason has fully embraced his dark side and I love that in a character.

2 Like

Wordsmitty ✍️

Jul 4, 2025 at 1:20pm
In response to "Book It, Not Done"

I guess this is why they make movie versions.

2 Like

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