Guilty Of Only Being Ugly
We thought we'd seen everything on the internet until just now when we discovered a Turkey Vulture Society. Did you know that a group of the vultures are a venue and a group that is circling is called a kettle?
We were checking on turkey vultures because we saw some recently on a drive to Sioux Falls, and Spearfish writer Tobin Barnes noted this week that he saw 20 or 30 circling in the sky over the northern Black Hills. They are more common in West River than around East River farm country, but they are showing up here more than ever. Maybe they follow mountain lions?
According to their web site, they are not to be feared for anything but being ugly. They actually don't like totally fresh meat, as in somebody and something alive. In fact, they have good senses of smell and they are attracted by mercapton, which is a gas produced by the beginning stages of decay.
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Just a comment or two about these poor misunderstood birds whose only fault is being ugly.
A few years ago, a “venue” of them, apparently seeking loftier goals, flew into town and decided to perch atop our 200 foot television tower behind the KELO studios. Somehow, through buzzardese or whatever method of communication they use, the word got out and now we have “kettles” by the hundreds who hold family reunions on the steel crossbars and antenna mounts at the tower’s top throughout the summer.
It’s a perfect spot to relax from a hard days soaring and scavenging. They chat, I suppose, about the lovely view and the tasty meal of gaseous road kill they’ve enjoyed. Then nature takes its course and almost in unison they release their digested material in such huge amounts that it can be picked up on the Keloland Live Doppler radar. It rains down onto the parked vehicles below giving them a nauseating polka dot appearance which must be washed off quickly before it burns a hole in the paint. Depending on which way the wind is blowing and the velocity, the entire lot and anything on it is vulnerable to this baptism of buzzard poop.
Angry vehicle owners have volunteered to shoot these polluting pests with a .22 rifle but that idea was nixed for safety reasons. So was a plan to hoist up some dead squirrels laced with enough poison to take ‘em all out. Come to find out someone, who has never had to live around them, managed to get turkey buzzards on a protected list so all we can do is try to scare them off the tower.
Our engineers actually got a speaker up there and pumped punk rock music through it. The big birds fluttered a bit but then started getting used to it. The Episcopalians attending church next door, however, did not so the music died.
When workers were making their annual tower inspection and changing burned out Christmas bulbs, (that illuminate the structure from Thanksgiving to New Years Day) they installed a “clapping” device on top that’s controlled by a 200 foot long rope. It makes a heck of a racket when pulled from below and at first the buzzards exploded off the tower in fear. But now they’ve gotten used to it and when they hear the clap, clap, clap it only seems to startle them enough to prematurely release more polka dot making material toward the cars and people below carrying open umbrellas on a sunny day.
Comment by Doug Lund — August 9, 2005 @ 10:17 am
Actually, a small flock has turned up here at the lake. I think they’re following me. They started circling the KELO tower about the time rumors that the place was for sale began circulating, rumors denied until they were no longer deniable. Turkey buzzards are truth on the wing. Steve Hemmingsen, and what the heck is a URI? It sounds like a baseball drug term…two, two, two cups in one.
Comment by steve Hemmingsen — August 9, 2005 @ 9:56 pm
A amall flock of the ugly bustards have showed up here at the lake. I think they’re following me. Actually, they showed up at KELO about the time that rumors the place was for sale started, rumors denied until 50 million dollars made them no longer deniable. As for their being harmless, if they make a strafing run on your car clean it up post haste. The birds eat the dead; their droppings eat your paint job. Steve Hemmingsen. By the way, what the heck is a URI anyway? It sounds like a baseball drug term; two, two, two cups in one.
Comment by steve Hemmingsen — August 9, 2005 @ 10:04 pm
So Doug umbrellas are to be used to keep sun off the body as well as other stuff, good story.
Comment by Eddee — August 10, 2005 @ 6:28 am
Just an interesting note from a scientific standpoint. Turkey vultures have perhaps the best sense of smell of any member of the bird world. They can do neat tricks like find piece of rotting meat hidden under a pile of leaves from a height of thousands of feet. Several years ago when I lived in southern California the Pacific Gas and Electric Cpmpany (PG&E) used this bit of information to their benefit. They intorduced a very small amount of mercapton (the rotten-flesh chemical that Bernie mentioned, measured in parts per million - and not enough for our dull human senses to pick up) into the natural gas lines and whenever they had to locate a leak in their gas lines all they has to do was watch for the circling vultures!
Nice bit of detective work!
Comment by K.C. Jensen — August 10, 2005 @ 9:21 am