“They are built for this work. They will spot a corpse from high in the sky, swoop down, then cautiously approach, while tens, then hundreds of other vultures, seeing a gathering, will join in. If the meat is getting a little skanky, they don’t care. The have a digestive system that can handle bacterial biotoxins. Rotten meat doesn’t make them sick. And if they get covered in blood and body parts, that’s a plus, because the odor keeps lions and other enemies away. What’s more, because their diet probably makes them taste bad, says biologist Bernd Heinrich, ‘few animals eat them. Indeed, they use their partially digested food in projectile vomit as a defense.’”
When asked about his preferences regarding reincarnation, William Faulkner said he’d like to come back as a turkey buzzard: “No one would bother you, and you could eat anything.” The perfect life, one suspects, for an artist.
