The Charms of a Vulture
Before getting into the meat of this story, I want to talk about vomit. Specifically, vulture vomit. Prior to my time working at Earthplace, a local nature center in Connecticut, I didn’t think much about whether or not vultures could vomit, or what might convince them to do so. I suppose, if pressed, I would’ve said, “Yup, I’d imagine they can.” And although my younger, more naive, non-vulture vomit seasoned self would’ve been correct, he wouldn’t have known the true ramifications of a regurgitating vulture. I can, however, on this side of things, tell you about it. It’s gross. It’s really, really gross.
Here is the thing with vultures, and anyone who lives in an area where roadkill is a common occurrence is probably aware of this, they eat dead animals. Occasionally lumped into the “birds of prey” category because of their size and, by some standards, fearsome look, they are actually strict scavengers. They don’t have the proper anatomy to catch anything still breathing, but have been finely sculpted by natural selection to be perfectly adept at gliding on air currents, sniffing out rotten meat, plopping down, and, using their featherless head, pecking and devouring bits and pieces other animals may pass up.
Not only is their external anatomy uniquely adapted to this lifestyle, but their digestive tract is as well. Equipped with extremely powerful stomach acid, almost everything the vulture eats is broken down - hair, feathers, skin, bone fragments, ligaments, all of it. Some of the bacteria that hang out on rotting meat can survive this process, but it is in fact inadvertently used by the vulture to further digest the meal within its intestines. Yup, some of what a vulture eats helps it digest what it just ate.
Now, this needn’t bother a young human vulture caretaker, as long as this slurry stays inside the bird. But, evolution has lots of interesting tricks up its sleeve and although it didn’t supply vultures with sharp, piercing talons to ward off would-be threats, it did provide them with an extremely effective, albeit perhaps less flashy defense: vomit. In simple terms, if you aggravate a vulture enough, it will puke on or near you, and trust me, near is good enough to do the job. How do I know, you might ask…
During my time at Earthplace, there were three captive vultures: one turkey vulture, and two black vultures. All of the birds I worked with there were wild birds that had been injured severely enough that humans decided they wouldn’t survive in the wild and needed to spend the rest of their lives in captivity. The turkey vulture was injured as a fledgling and therefore had spent most of its life around people and had become quite used to them, i.e. not a big puker. The two black vultures however were injured as adults and were, rightfully so, much more skeptical of humans and therefore much more likely to want to make them go away.
Necessary construction in the vulture’s cage dictated that we needed to remove them temporarily so this could be done. As an animal caretaker, this was part of my job. So, one rainy afternoon, I got to chasing vultures around a cage with a bedsheet, trying to convince them I wasn’t there to kill them. Why a bedsheet? This helped corral an individual bird into a corner and once close enough, could be thrown over the head of the animal. Similar to other animals like crocodiles, being blindfolded helps calm them down…sometimes.
Incredibly, with the help of a few coworkers, we wrestled all three vultures inside the nature center building and into their temporary enclosures. We all wiped our brows and patted ourselves on the back for a job well done, three relocated vultures, zero vomit. As I walked away from the holding area I heard my colleague say, “oh, dammit, she puked.”
I’m not sure I can describe the odor of vulture vomit appropriately. The closest I can get is it is related to the smell of human vomit if that smell was turned up to 11 and then seasoned with rotting meat. Perhaps an indication of its potency is the fact that hours later at home I needed to take isopropyl alcohol soaked q-tips to my nostrils to try and remove the lingering smell from my nose. I’m pretty sure I just threw out the clothes I was wearing that day. It’s really, really gross.
I should’ve mentioned that the area of the building where the vultures were being temporarily housed was adjacent to a preschool classroom filled with 3 and 4 year olds. Although we tried to prevent the smell from creeping into the classroom like a flesh-eating fog, it was to no avail, and that area of the building was cleared until the rooms could be aired out. There is part of me that smirks when I think of the conversations that must have taken place explaining to parents why their children’s classroom time was disrupted. “So, you see, there was a smell…” Thankfully, those conversations happened above my pay grade.
If any more evidence is needed that vultures are, by human standards, fairly disgusting, they also poop on themselves regularly. Like most things animals do, this too serves a purpose. Vultures can’t sweat and when it is warm out, much like sweat, evaporating liquid on the surface of the skin helps to cool down the vulture’s body and regulate its internal temperature. So, in the absence of sweat glands, poop it is.
It might be surprising then to hear that an animal with a bald head and poop covered legs, that vomits rotten meat when it gets nervous, went on to win me over as one of the more charming creatures I’ve worked with in my life with animals. We called him E.T.
Now, to be clear, although I was a fan of E.T.’s pretty quickly, he was absolutely not a fan of mine for a significant portion of our relationship. E.T. had a few favorite people that worked at the nature center and they were generally the people that had been there and cared for him since his injury as a fledgling. I watched as my boss at the time would walk up to E.T. in the cage, scratch him under the chin and give him a pat on the head, “Good boy, E.T. Good boy.” E.T. wouldn’t so much as flinch. “Great,” I thought, “E.T. is a good boy.”
As an animal caretaker, most of your time is spent cleaning up after the animals you care for. Vultures are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not the tidiest of creatures. Unlike some birds like owls that swallow their prey whole and then regurgitate a compact and easy to clean bolus of bone and feather, vultures, for the most part, stuff their face inside any opening they can find, scarf down the soft bits inside and leave behind an inside out carcass to either rot or be picked up by a human. Their runny white excrement stains anything and everything it comes in contact with including the wooden walls of their cage, and their propensity to pick at things means the perches supplied for them that are painstakingly wrapped in twine and astroturf quickly become a bald log with a pile of ripped up twine and astroturf sitting next to it. All this is to say that vultures require lots of daily care and that was my job. Each day I would head to the enclosure lugging a hose to wash the cage and bucket to collect the inverted dead rats and get to work.
Large bird enclosures are built with double doors and a small staging area in between in order to prevent any accidental escapes. When I would enter the staging area of the vulture cage and close the first door, the two black vultures would hop and flutter around nervously and seek shelter in a hide as far away from me as they could. E.T. the turkey vulture, with his distinguishing red head, would sit on a perch, at my eye level, and stare. As far as he was concerned, I was breaking and entering and he was not having it.
Upon entering, a few things would happen depending on E.T.’s mood. Some days, I’d walk in, dragging the hose alongside and he would stay on his eye level perch, just watching, slowly rotating as I walked by. It felt a bit like one of those paintings in a haunted house that always seems to be looking at you - except instead of a gaunt old white man in formalwear, it was a vulture, on a log.
Other days, E.T. decided that intimidation wasn’t nearly enough. The first step I would take into the enclosure was an affront that required immediate action. He would hop down from his perch and with his substantial wings spread, immediately latch onto my boot with his feet. He would then use his strong, sharp beak to pluck at my shoelaces or bite at my ankles. Typically he would get a beak full of denim or cotton, but occasionally he’d be able to grab some of the skin underneath which left a painful welt and bruise.
Vultures evolved to pull and tear at the flesh of recently (or not so recently) deceased animals so when they bite, they grip down hard with a sharp beak and then twist as they pull away. This is a great way to pull things like muscle and ligament away from bone as well as a terrific way to make a human caretaker swear in front of the children watching him clean the vulture cage. After wiggling my foot enough to create some space between E.T. and me, I would take a few more steps into the cage and the process would start all over again. We did this dance every day for more than six months - close the first door, black vultures scatter, open the second door, E.T. stare or bite. Repeat.
I had begun to come around to the idea that I was never going to win E.T. over. Perhaps this was our relationship, and that was okay I told myself. This of course was a lie. I really wanted E.T. to like me. I never thought I’d be trying to win the affection of a bald buzzard that shit on its own legs and physically assaulted me daily, but there we were, caught in an epic struggle: the human desire to be accepted, the vulture desire to bite and twist.
One drizzly Spring day, something changed. To this day, I don’t know what the catalyst was, but as I pulled the hose and bucket into the vulture enclosure and prepared my ankles, E.T. sat upon his perch and didn’t move. “Ok,” I thought. “It’s an intimidation day. Got it.” Although as I got closer and closer to E.T. I sensed that something was different. Watching his body posture, he seemed more relaxed, calmer, less…bitey. I decided to take advantage of this and put down the bucket and hose and ever so slowly I approached him until we were shoulder to shoulder. Although not a particularly dangerous animal, I found my heart beating faster. In part because I was excited that perhaps, just maybe, E.T. had disregarded some of his distaste for me, but mostly because I really didn’t want to take a beak to the face. And there we stood, for several minutes, our faces about a foot and a half apart, not moving. It was a bit like standing in a line and realizing you know the person behind you, not enough to be comfortable, but too much not to say anything, I felt the need to break the silence. Being the animal whisperer I was, the conversation went something like this:
Me: “Hey… So… How’s it going?”
E.T.: “...”
Me: “Good, good.”
E.T.: *rustles feathers*
Me: “Cool, well. I’m gonna get back to work.”
Each day after this, I’d have a quick chat with E.T. and try my luck at getting closer and eventually touching him. Progress happened much faster than I thought it might. Within a week or two, I could not only stand next to him, but I could lightly pet his feathers and every so often give him a scratch under his chin. Within a month, he was willing to hop onto my arm from his perch and I could walk around briefly with him balancing on my forearm. He was also happily willing to defecate on my arm, which if vultures have a sense of humor I’m sure was his favorite joke. Poop aside, it seemed as if E.T. and I had finally made at least a truce of some kind, if not a strange sort of connection. I like to think that he finally came around to my charm, but more likely he realized that I was just not going away and decided I wasn’t trying to kill him. Whatever the case, I chose to believe we were buds.
One of my fondest memories of working with E.T. was during the summer when my task was to re-wrap every perch in the enclosure. This was an all afternoon project, but the sun was bright, all the other animals were cleaned and fed, so I was happy to grab some tools, a big ball of twine, a plastic container filled with astroturf, and hang out with my pal.
As I sat on the ground cutting the old wrappings off the branches, I could hear E.T. messing with things behind me. He had found the ball of new twine that was still in the plastic from the store and was seemingly having a great time trying to open it. Plastic and animals typically don’t get along, so I took his toy away from him. Like a bored toddler, he found something else to play with, this time, my shoelaces. I wondered to myself if he was actually interested in what we humans might call play, or if he was just relaxed enough around me to not be defensive and his natural plucking instincts were kicking in. I grabbed an old piece of twine and dangled it in front of E.T.’s beak. Almost immediately he grabbed a hold of it. We began a game of tug of war, much like you would with a family dog. He stretched out his more than 5-foot wingspan to give himself leverage as he pulled back on the twine, making it taught. As the pressure built, and he continued to pull and pull, I abruptly let go of my end and sent E.T. falling onto his back. I laughed and pointed, very pleased with myself that I had made a bird fall down. E.T. quickly righted himself, ruffled his feathers, and stood proudly with dirt on his wings and his prized twine in his beak. We continued to play, or whatever it may have been, for the rest of the afternoon as I wrapped the perches.
Eventually, I left my position at Earthplace and therefore I left E.T. I was moving on to a different place in my life, a luxury that E.T., along with all the other animals I worked with, didn’t have. It was bittersweet, but I knew that there would be a long line of caretakers and volunteers that he could terrorize and/or play with after me. Years after my departure, I went back to Earthplace, as a visitor. I stood outside the vulture enclosure, watching through rubber-coated wire as the black vultures hopped and scattered and the turkey vulture stood still on his perch. I wondered if he remembered me. If, perhaps, there was something vaguely familiar about my face, or maybe, my scent. After a few minutes, he fluttered ungracefully off his perch and slowly approached the front of the enclosure. I crouched and extended my hand, two fingers reaching beyond the cage. “Hey. How’s it going?” He stopped, plucked at the intestines of a dead rat, and stared.