Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.Julius Caeser (III.i)
-Shakespeare
On any given morning, in the aftermath of summer storms, one needn’t travel far in the rural midwest to come upon the sight of turkey vultures perched in old hay mows or snarled, bare-limbed cottonwoods, their wings fanned awkwardly in what is known as the horaltic pose. There is some uncertainty among wildlife biologists whether or not this spread-eagle stance is performed for thermoregulation or as a hygienic measure, or perhaps a bit of both. Allowing the wind and sun to penetrate their feathers, these buzzards appear to be taking what early American statesman, inventor, pervert and fellow almanac writer Benjamin Franklin referred to as an “air bath.” It must be noted that, despite the turkey vulture’s apparent penchant for hygiene, it also practices urohidrosis, an evaporation cooling technique employed by some birds in which they defecate on their own legs. Over time, the uric acid residue, which has antibacterial properties, builds up, and the scaly, horn-colored legs become crusted white.
Having been blessed by evolution with sweat glands, I have never intentionally performed an act of urohidrosis myself– though on still mornings after sweating through my bedsheets, swampy afternoons spent tromping through the tick-ridden savanna, or even relatively quick trips inside the hoop house this time of year, I will admit to adopting a certain horaltic stance of my own. (As butt-sweat has become a prominent theme in the almanac lately, I’ll just leave it at that for now, with the solemn promise that we’ll be heading all too deeply back into that territory again in an upcoming special edition.)
Sweaty butts and urine-stained talons aside, no discussion regarding turkey vultures would be complete without recognizing what appears to be their most prominent ecological function: carrion consumption. Buzzards forage by smell, which is unusual in birds, most specifically the scent of of ethyl mercaptan, present in rotting flesh, and to a much smaller extent, petroleum. (Another aside, the ethyl mercaptan (also known as ethanethiol) emitted during natural gas leaks was observed to draw in buzzards to such a degree that natural gas companies adopted its use, at stronger concentrations, as a leak indicator for domestic use.) Without the prompt services of scavenging carrion-eaters like buzzards, disease associated with animal decay could become epidemic in some habitats.
Turkey vultures like their meals on the fresher end of decayed– like most vertebrate life, putrefaction is a bridge too far, but a bit of ripening and bloating creates enough tension in the skin of carrion so that turkey buzzards can rip their way in, plunging their bald heads down deep towards the rich, red quarry within. In the aftermath of hay harvests, they can be seen, broadly soaring over swathes of fresh-cut grass, or perched upon the shorn fields, choking down the remains of mowed snakes, rodents, and ground nesting birds.
Down along the asphalt, groups of flesh-tearing vultures, known as a wake, hunch over the automobile-ravaged carcasses of white tail deer, their motionless eyes fixed over yonder ditch, or the inflated forms of raccoons run asunder– the casualties of humanity’s apartheid infrastructure, dividing us from the diminished habitat we’ve left behind. In flight, a grouping of vultures is referred to as a kettle. When they are neither feeding at carrion or soaring thermal currents, a group of buzzards is known as a volt, venue, or my personal favorite, a committee.
Each and every day clear summer day, from my point of view in this brambled, hilltop hedgerow, kettles of far-off buzzards soar and scan and circle ethanethiol emissions, rising from the dead– it is clear why these gangly beasts, related more closely to storks than birds of prey, portend fatal doom. They thrive on death, both that which is natural, and that which indicates our own failings as a species. Much like city rats and their complimentary barn-dwelling country kin, turkey vulture populations are greatly advanced by the wasteful activities of civilization, particularly the killing fields of America’s excessive system of highways– the custodians of our failure to remain integrated in the fields and forests of our origin.
It’s been a couple weeks since solstice, and the days are ostensibly shorter. Still, the yoke of steamy air, made sweltering by recent bouts of soaking rains and the transpiration of plant life, bears upon our straining and burdened shoulders like hot, atmospheric stew. I will concede that the summer squalls have been adequate enough to ensure rapid growth in any crop that has not been nipped down by rabbits, that there will continue to be plentiful grass in the pasture, and that the hundreds of trees planted here this year will largely live, and we hope, thrive in establishment.
Breakfast has been a big spoon and a half of instant coffee swirled into ambient temp potable water, with palmfuls of wild blackberries plucked from arching brambles every hundred yards or so, gathered between paddocks of inquisitive young turkeys and fat, wallering hogs. In exchange for the sugar, I grant the thorny clumps their requisite blood drops, my arms scratched up to my elbows in pursuit of purple splendor. The flourishing young turkeys, upon being loosed from their wagon each morning, flap down to the dewy shade of the draw, hunting down groggy grasshoppers slowed by the short, damp nights. Inevitably, these hunting parties, clawing and pecking through the wet cover of Sorghastrum nutans and mounded clumps of tick clover like feathery velociraptors, will come upon the bramble patches from which I derive my morningtide nutrients, and I’m fine to share in what has been an abundant berry season.
Assorted flycatchers and swallows careen o’er the cattle, banking in sharply from the draw edge to scoop unassuming flies and gnats in their tiny beaks. A second gleaning of this glut of airborne invertebrates will occur at dusk, harvested by fluttering little brown bats. Goats browse the tender tips and tendrils of wild grape that creeps up old hedge posts and out along the burdened branches of abandoned fencerows, and our herd of swine, when not snoring in the shade of pin oak or wallering in muddy depressions during the day’s heat, spends the cool, crepuscular hours nibbling Reed’s canary grass.
This is the peak of vegetative growth, the photosynthetic climax of high summer, each tree leaf and grass blade widened to absorb the lifeblood of long days, each root hair fattened and nourished in damp earth. The fields and woods and hollers and all that dwell within them are in resplendent growth, making earth and air and sun into sugar and milk and flesh, lignin and beak and bone. The long swath of sun, slicing along the sky like a scythe, directs our work into a further and further outward spiral of nutritional pursuit– we guide and herd our flocks to fatten before earth dries and the darkness returns. We crouch over the aggregated patchwork of humus and fungi and nematodes and nurture thickening stalks and vines for our own nurturance. We remain in this place, on top the few living inches of organic matter that support our existence– we are dirt people, and if we do not tend to this dirt, kettles of vultures await us on the horizon.
We are dirt people. In composition, so is the whole of our species. Some of us are just dirtier than others. Carbon, nitrogen, a little calcium and ash– we’re the same as the place we’re headed, and where we’ve come from. We are dirt people, to a lesser extent, those of us who practice hydroponics or have been entirely sequestered behind, between, and beneath the asphalt streaked red with ‘possum blood and frequented by wakes of hunched buzzards. Some of us rinse the ecstatic, living dust of the field from our sweating skin in the crawdad muck of swimming holes after mornings spent squeezing the guts out of copulating squash bugs on the undersides of tattered leaves, only to find ourselves as dirty as we arrived after returning home over the nodding, buzzing swards of grass.
Turkey vultures catch thermals far west of here in the high, bright midmorning, though our sloping pastures are flecked with a few beheaded duck carcasses, taken in the night by our local, decrepit barred owl, weakened by old age or disease. It perches unseen at dusk, willing to swoop in and risk injury and death by working dog, in order to sustain its time-worn form with the nutritious, fatty paste of poultry brains. Now and then, when the ethyl mercaptan rises from predated fawns and gunshot raccoons, a buzzard or two will swoop in low, but it largely appears that they prefer to keep their distance from us, in spite of our local culinary offerings. More often, the work of decomposition comes down to the things that creep low– carrion beetles and ‘possums, maggots and microbes. The bones are finally scattered by coyotes at the tail end of the photosynthetic spiral, alongside our far flung implements of agrarian work.
The business of farming is necessarily dirty, occasionally filthy, and in high summer, lends itself to disorganization. Repair work clutters the available surface area, and trails of tools mark paths that wend between grazed down paddocks and overgrown orchards. Wet boots and burnt out socks dot the homestead walkways. As the grass stretches upward to beg for sun, a menagerie of discarded human artifacts fades into the green, but as for the biotic messes we leave behind, our scavenging companions do the dirty work.
Here at the tail-end of the spiral, the days are getting shorter, or so I’m told, and while my seasonal free fall has not turned to burn out yet, I do sense my own gradual return to the dark nucleus of time. It’s high summer, and I have left a trail of debris unfit for a buzzard. Still, I’m a dirt person. It can’t be washed from me anymore, and in death, when I cease to be any person at all, I will still be dirt, some place to hold seed or bear fruit if future generations are fortunate enough. Otherwise I may be blown from these slopes in hot winds or torrential floods in a world gone topsy-turvy. And those implements of our separation from this dirt, of forged steel and plastic and synthetic textiles and monuments and our precious digital footprints, who will scavenge them when we’re gone?