The morning after I returned from New York, I made my weekly trip to my dad's farm to feed his cats. As I was walking back to my car, I saw this odd, but rather mesmerizing "buzzard convention". And they seemed rather proud that I wanted to take their photograph, puffing their chests out and opening their beaks as if to say, "We are mighty in groups and you should respect us". I am not sure their confident posturing factors in the actuality their whole lives exist on disposing of roadkill.
But I never see a buzzard without thinking of of a game my sister and I played in the 1950s as young children in the backyard of our little house. It was a time when your mother shooed you out the door and told you to "Play outside!" anytime the temperatures were above 50. There weren't a lot of toys so your quality of entertainment was directly related to your level of creative imagination.
Because our house at the end of Main Street was bordered on two sides by very large pastures and fields, we often saw buzzards floating above, surveying the area for less fortunate or vulnerable animals.
For some odd reason, my sister and I were fascinated by these elegant shiny black birds with the menacing eyes. We had seen them swoop down and take off with parts of dead animals many times, and we began to fantasize about how much fun it would be to fly with them.
So, our favorite activity that summer was to go outside, lie in a wide open space, and pretend to be dead! We would lay there for what seemed to be hours, whispering, or peeking out with one eye, hoping to fool the buzzards into thinking we were candidates for a trip through the air back to their home.
Our mother would come outside and ask what we were doing andwalk off, shaking her head when we tried to explain. Why she had more children after the two of us proved to have such questionable judgement, has always been a mystery.
Obviously, the wise old buzzards never came for us and by autum, we grew tired of this exercise in futility.
That sense of adventure and daring has long gone and been replaced with practically and caution......and age. But the experience has always been filed away in this old mind, brought back anew, whenever I see a buzzard!
