Vulturous

My dog and I were chased by a vulture on our afternoon walk last week.

I kid you not.

I was all bundled up and my pup (Jackson) was strapped into his adorable harness. When this dog hears the “w” word he gets this incredible spark. We can’t even spell it out, “W-A-L-K” without grabbing his attention (wayyyy too smart, ya’ll).

Wtih a pep in his step, we were off for our neighborhood walk and all was right in the world.

Let’s set the scene… I live in Nashville. Our neighborhood is part city, part suburbs, merged together into perfection. I tell you this because I grew up in NY and back then, Tennessee just made me think of farms and open space. Where I live is not remote, or rural.

Basically, encounters with vultures and other wildlife representatives are not common.

We turned onto the next block to take our usual route, when this massive bird locked eyes with me.

Ummm… now what?

It was chowing down on some yummy roadkill a la squirrel; Jackson and I were clearly the interlopers of this meal.

I literally froze. Do I turn around? Walk a different way? Just stroll by as if this is normal and everything’s fine (this sounded terrifying tbh)?

Finally an SUV rounded the corner and noticed the debacle. The car drove directly towards the bird and honked its horn to encourage it to move along.

I thought this would work! Perfect!

WRONG.

This pissed that damn bird OFF.

It flew off for a moment…

…and then started swooping back and forth toward us, defending it’s furry lunchtime feast.

Jackson panicked and started barking. Honestly, I thought I was about to start barking — like, what else does one do in this situation? Barking didn’t sound like the worst idea.

And then we ran down the street, away from the bird, and took a different route.

So now I’m reflecting on this bizarre story and wondering what message, lesson, or moral I can pull out of it (as writers do). Here’s what I’ve come up with:

• Sometimes walking →or running← away from something is okay. Self-preservation is more important than stubbornness or “seeing things through” if your mental, physical or emotional health is at stake (in this scenario all 3 were on the line for me).
• Going with the flow can turn out better than your original plan. Jackson and I took and abbreviated walk down a different street, and then played with his toys in the front yard. It was a different kind of movement for us both, but it was a welcome disruption from our normal routine.
• People are cool. How nice was that SUV to try to help me fend off the vulture? Love my neighbors!
• Finally, it reminded me to be SELFISH like a vulture sometimes. The word selfish has been something I’ve explored often this year and the vulture taught me how to be obsessively, aggressively, protectively VULTUROUS when it comes to the things I want in life, relationships, and business (but maybe without the bloody squirrel part…)

So, if you ever find yourself chased by a wild animal, I hope you’re able to pull out a few insightful takeaways too… but really, I just hope you get away safely.

Epilogue: I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out the vulture. Vultures and all decomposers in our ecosystems are BADASS (fun fact: did you know I used to teach middle school science?!). While I am humbly terrified of them, they clean up our neighborhood and our world and keep everything flowing. As long as they don’t try to scoop up my dog like Toto in the Wiz of Oz, we’re good.