Driving in to work several days ago, I saw a curious thing; a thing that made me smile, made me think, and caused a bit of wonder. A possum had not been quick enough crossing the road and was laying dead, not quite in the gutter. Standing over the corpse, in an attitude of what can only be described as proprietary dismay, was a vulture. A black-feathered, naked-headed, red-skinned buzzard. It stood there, prepared to protect a veritable banquet from the metal monsters whizzing past not three feet away. The bird would stoop to feed, then jerk upright in protective alarm as another car went by.
Vultures are common here, though not as much as when I was a child. Their presence, however, is usually restricted to sightings of a circling flock and an occasional nesting colony in a nearby eucalyptus grove. Rarely are they seen in civilization, on the ground, or outside of a teaching exhibit. This tableau, then, while curious enough by nature, sparked more curiosity. Was there a dearth of dead animals in the hills that the bird risked traffic for a meal? Had the bird become so used to humanity that it no longer considered that it, too, might become roadkill? Has our city population encroached so far into the hills (in spite of legislation to the contrary) that the bird has come to view city streets as smorgasbord?
