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Radical Gratitude: The Marvelously Macabre
A Day of the Dead display, courtesy of Nature.
Here in Wine Country, the chamber of commerce vibe is all about joie de vivre, shopping and feasting and, of course, wine. So it’s an ironic counterpoint to the general frivolity that the bird we see most often around here is the turkey vulture. Personally, I am quite fond of them.
Turkey vultures are hardly unique to Napa Valley where I live. They have an enormous range, from the tip of South America to southern Canada, if you include the breeding grounds to which some of them migrate seasonally. But they’re permanent residents in the U.S., where they are an enormously successful and valuable member of a variety of ecosystems. Personally, I’m quite fond of them.
Perhaps you do not share my enthusiasm for these looming, sepulchral harbingers of death. But just think what the landscape would look like if they weren’t on the job, cleaning up everything from dead grasshoppers to road-kill deer. We’d be up to our armpits in yuck.
Now, right in tune with the Day of the Dead weekend, these big birds with their suitably funereal plumage and bald, blood-colored heads have begun greeting the day as they prefer to when the mornings grow cooler.
