Here's another little piece where I alert the readers (and me) about leaving out the overused words and using other verbs that won't bore the readers
with repetition.
Keeping My Cool
They're big, black, ugly and they're up there every day. Zopilotes, Turkey Vultures. Also called Buzzards they are almost three feet long, six feet
of broad black wings, weigh about four pounds. As I lie comfortably in a lounge chair, Bloody Mary in hand, composing articles and stories for
magazines and the press, I can enjoy them, just overhead. I have always admired the birds, envied their aerial elegance, the exquisite freedom flight
accords them, a freedom I can never know. From time to time I have used the birds to color my stories about this part of Mexico. So far my
descriptions of the birds in flight have been impossibly bland, add little to the stories -- "the big, black birds wheeling, gliding on the thermals,
etc.,etc.....". Better to leave them out than to paint such a colorless scene. Fellow writers have failed to capture the majesty of the creatures
--"they wheel, soar, glide -- hover, hang like big kites...ya da, ya da, ya da...." I need to really watch them awhile; get to know them, pay
attention, find the words that may bring them to life, paint them against the sky with the same grandeur we lavish on the their cousins, the eagles.
If I tilt my lounge chair back a little I can watch them without moving a muscle. Today several birds are aloft just above my patio, the wind is
strong and gusty; a good day for observation. Now that I pay the proper attention I can see why the words fail. They are not just soaring, wheeling;
they are in constant motion. This wind is not a steady flow of cool air rushing from the beach, up this little bluff to my house. It is not a stream
of air, rather, it is great puffs; pulsing, softly now, a powerful gust, soft again, little short bursts, more gusts, a shoulder against an invisible
door. The birds are not possessed of a special kind of vision, some precognitive way to see the wind, anticipate the wind's wild vacillations,
changes taking place in tiny parts of seconds; all the birds' moves are adjustments--made at lightning speed, each subtle movement of muscle, bone and
feather in wondrous harmony.
These birds are not flying. Flying is flapping wings to propel the bird forward. Each vulture is making adjustments at incredible speed -- the
result allows the bird to stay aloft, in the same general area, without burning precious calories needed for great flapping movements of the wings.
As the wind gusts and wanes they fold the wrist of the wing, spread their primaries at the wing tips, fold and lower the broad tail feathers, smooth
the small coverts -- constantly rearranging the surfaces touched by the wind. At times they roll their bodies, tip both wings to decrease the lift;
in this attitude they slip downward and to the side, take up a new station a short distance away at the same height.
Now I can begin to understand what they are doing. The new and bigger question is "Why in the hell are they doing it?" The second Bloody Mary helps
me get closer. I let my mind and body drift aloft, enter the spirit of the black weavers. I imagine being buffeted by the wind gusts. I tighten my
small shrunken thumb, slightly folding a wing as the wind abates. Tiny muscles are now moving my wingtip primary feathers to stabilize my horizontal
attitude.
A breakthrough, a revelation. The big birds are using no more energy to make these miraculous adjustments than I do when I turn slightly in my
chair, toward the beach, to see a passing boat. Now some eduction is called for: these birds, just above my head, have been in the air all morning.
Since they have sharp eyes and an uncanny sense of smell (they can smell carrion from hundreds of feet in the air to a radius of five miles) they
would have discovered anything edible on the ground after the first few minutes. If we rule out this stationary routine as a part of mating, it can
only mean that the birds are up in the wind to regulate their body temperature and to conserve energy/calories. They eat on the average of two to
three times per month. It may be that they use less energy aloft, on the wind, than when at rest, roosting on the ground or on a cactus. On cold,
wet mornings I have seen them stretch their broad wings to catch the morning sun -- the same birds hold this Kodak Moment pose, let the breeze
dissipate the heat from their wings on July and August afternoons.
All this study has heated me up. I put down my glass, walked to the outdoor shower for a cool change of pace, walked cool and dripping back to the
lounge, resumed my studies. Now things are taking a very different perspective -- these birds were roosting, sensed the wind, HAD to go aloft to
conserve energy for as long as possible; to live another day to hunt for scarce roadkill. It's like they have a job. They dare not stay on the
ground, on the roost if there is an opportunity to conserve energy or body fat -- their lives depend on their being able to use the wind whenever and
wherever possible. This grand freedom I have so envied turns out to be a life-or-death injunction, not a flight of fancy.
Two of the beasts are now hovering very low, close to my position. They are c-cking their ugly, red heads to get a better look -- the eyes have a
nasty leer -- curiosity? Did we, however briefly, trade places? While my mind's eye floated with them, did they sense, if only for seconds, my
mystical intrusion, drop down to enter my cooler world? Could it now be envy?I'll make sure tomorrow. I may bring out a little bucket of ice, make
some more Bloody Mary's --- this time with real blood.
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