I’ve seen a turkey vulture once with clarity, tho my memory of it feels so weak and incoherent.  It was eating roadkill and we zoomed past it and out of sight in a split second, on a road trip I don’t recall with people I don’t recall.  Was it with my bro and my tech support guy?  Was it with my husband and his mom?  Was it with jeremy and brandy?  My dad?  Pretty sure it was in Washington state somewhere between Tacoma and Vancouver WA.

Other than that, I’ve seen a lot of them in Kansas when visiting my brother.  Down there they circle just like in the cartoons, but I don’t know that they’re specifically circling dying creatures.  They seemed to be circling hills at the sides of the highway… the highway with lots of roadkill coyotes and deer.

At that distance however – from the highway on a sunny day – they are so many black Vs floating in the sky.  Were they actually turkey vultures or black vultures?  Turkey vultures are more common in the places I’ve been down there, so I’ll assume they were.

Turkey vultures are in that New World vulture genus Cathartes.  They’re very different from Old World vultures, but still part of the eagle and hawk clade, Accipitriformes, if I got that spelling right.  Once upon a time some clever characters names Sibley and Ahlquist came up with a gene testing method that didn’t need sequencing, which wasn’t as advanced then as it is now.  They put chromosomes from different species together and observed how closely they married up – again, if I got that right.  Using this method, they arrived at the idea Cathartes grouped with storks.  The idea had a little staying power, tho it turned out to be wrong.

I think turkey vultures look kinda ill compared to Old World vultures.  Their head seems too small, too weak.  And with the red-pink flesh, they kinda look like they’re partially skinned.  Cenobite-ass freaks.  Black vultures are extremely similar but the mercy of having black skin on their bald heads makes them look much less nasty.

Not that I wouldn’t pet one, given the opportunity.  I like creachers.

Apologies to people who would prefer I fact-checked or researched these things.  I think it’s more fun to freeball it and have a smarty correct me in the comments.  Or just give me your vulture stories below!

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