Article by Marynn Krull Art by Willa Schendler
Vultures don’t eat their own kind. In fact, black vultures are said to be scared of the carcasses of other vultures. They couldn’t prey on themselves, on each other, even if survival required it. The 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects vultures from human tampering — physically, if not psychologically.
To deter vultures’ bullying and predation of livestock, it’s recommended that cattle farmers string a dead vulture upside down and hang it where they keep their animals. What the fuck? I thought as I read the AgProud Idaho article.
Unlike most other hunting birds, vultures have eyes on the sides of their heads. This characteristic is typical of prey animals. So the maxim goes: “Eyes in front, I hunt. Eyes on side, I hide.”
This makes human vision predatory. We have a crescent moon-shaped view of the world. But of course, we can’t really see everything all at once. So we developed selective attention, without which, we would constantly be staring at our own noses. Our brains decide there are more pressing things to notice around us.
In high school anatomy and physiology, I learned about predators and prey, and the eye placement thing. Having eyes on the front of your head gives you better depth perception, but a narrower field of vision. It’s optimal for, say, an eagle, to hone in on a mouse in a field from over 10,000 feet off the ground and snatch it up in one fell swoop.
In high school, I went to a youth group because I was desperate to learn how to forgive, and supposedly, God is the expert in that arena. Sometime around the tender years of 13 and 14, I began to feel like this gangly, socially awkward, strangled version of myself. Squawking involuntarily, I watched myself from the outside as a parasite took me over from the inside out.
One Wednesday night, we were playing a game involving blindfolds and partners. I was paired with my twin brother. He was supposed to be directing me on where to go to achieve some unclear end — no doubt a metaphor about life under God. Distracted by his knucklehead friends, my brother shouted, “Run! Run!” And that’s what I did — right into a cement pillar in the center of the church basement. I collided nose-first.
I’m sure it didn’t make a crunch, like biting into a stack of Pringles, but that’s how I imagine it sounded.
I clawed the blindfold from my eyes, letting the fluorescent overhead lighting sparkle into my vision like sunlight from beneath the surface of the ocean.
Tears flooded my eyes as all the blood in my body rushed to my nose, like iron filings to a Texas-sized magnet. I proclaimed, “I’m alright. No, really, I’m totally fine.” I fumed with frustration so visceral I couldn’t force my tears in either direction, forward or backward. I forgave my brother later that night.
My nose has been a little Picasso-esque ever since then. After observing a depiction of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, shortly after her passing, I had a conversation with a friend about political cartoons. A big nose makes for a good caricature. We have big noses in common, Ruth and I, which comforts me. It’s a symbol of resilience, a badge of honor, like a yellowing bruise. It’s all about what you see in the mirror, not how you see it.
And I suppose my nose helps me remember that if I can appreciate mine, I can appreciate something about my dad. He’s a chaplain these days. Maybe if I can forgive him, I can forgive myself too.
Once, I found myself sitting in the backmost row of the highest pew in the chapel. It had been years since I set foot in any religious space. With a shadow of stained glass at my back, I looked down into the empty rows below, engulfed in a too-thick silence. I waited for forgiveness, for someone to say to me, like I did to my boyfriend, “It’s just nature. We don’t judge mother animals for cannibalizing their young.” When you’re in the middle of eating, crouching in the weeds, it’s all pink and dripping and stuck in your teeth. It’s survival.
Vultures can fly up to 37,000 feet, which is much higher than an eagle. I always assumed they were ground-bound birds, like turkeys or geese, and mean like them too. But they do fly, and they’re actually very friendly to humans.
They’re poor, misunderstood creatures, I think. They’re somewhat brilliant because of their eye placement, not in spite of it. They hunt at the same height as many commercial planes, nearly unable to see their prey. Some vultures kill and others scavenge, picking discarded bits from ground-level. Some do both.
It’s rare to find a dead vulture. Typically when you see them, they’ve only come out to eat and circle the sky, so I guess they’re doing alright.
In Economics, I learned that productivity is relative: given your resources, how much can you procure, produce, or perform? By this metric, vultures, considering their evolutionary disadvantage, are much more productive than other birds. It’s perhaps their inability to really narrow in on what’s in front of them, but instead take in all that’s around them, that allows vultures to soar so high and somehow still succeed at catching prey. Unlike eagles and humans, they can get out of their own way. Selective attention creates blind spots of its own.
When vultures find their prize, they circle in the sky to alert one of their triumph against the odds. Alone, but not for long. 37,000 feet from all the bodies in the closet, from the shreds of carrion in the soil.