To bad there isn't an emoticon for "weird" because that's how the last 2 days have been. I already posted that the clothes washer died which I managed to feel pretty calm about. Then last evening as I went to feed the chickens and closed them up for the night I found a big ugly buzzard on my back porch! Yes, a vulture. Ugly nasty looking thing! I managed to get it off the porch and I thought it would fly away but it didn't. I don't think it can fly. Not sure if it has a broken wing or is sick but it made NO attempt to fly away. I thought it far enough away from the house that it would leave on its' own. Yea, right! This morning when ds went out to feed the outside cats guess who was hanging around! Ds came screaming back in, "MOM, the vulture is still here!!!!" So out I go to push it away again! I went to the feed store and came back to find the bird perched in the corner where the front porch meets the house! I immediately thought of Snoopy doing his vulture impression in the "Peanuts" comic strip. This time ds says, "If its' wing is broke so it can't fly are we going to take it to the doctor? Then we could keep it as a pet!" To which I reply, "I'm not paying a vet bill for a vulture and the neighbors already think we're weird enough as it is. We don't need a pet vulture to improve their opinion of us!" Marty
I'd call the conservation department for sure. If it can't fly, you are looking at a few less chickens and cats in the near future.
That's what I thought. I couldn't tell for sure if it's wing was broke. It wasn't dragging a wing on the ground like you would expect if it were broken. This made me think it might be sick. Bird flu and West Nile are carried by birds and I sure don't want either of those loose on the farm!!! There's no bird rescue around and the conservation dept wants us to catch and contain the buzzard before they'll look at it. I'm not touching it and don't have a way of trapping or containing it. At this point it kind of moot. I haven't seen a sign of it this afternoon. Maybe it decided to leave since the only dead "thing" around here is the clothes washer. :lol: I'll keep you posted if it comes back. Marty
Or.....you could kill two birds with one stone and toss a dead mouse in your dead washer to trap the buzzard. Then you could have the Conservation Dept. pick it up and you could write off the washer as a donation.
The Conservation dept would accuse me of trying to hide something since I was obviously "cleaning up" the buzzard before calling them!:lol: I told dh that I posted about the buzzard on the Spot. He said, "Stuff like this only happens to us." He was laughing when he said it. I have visions of ds telling grandma about the almost pet buzzard the next time we have a family get together. Dh's mom will be having spasms about it! :shock: I figure it's just part of living in the boondocks! Marty
A buzzard's defence mechanism is to throw up. I would NOT try containing that thing for any reason whatsoever!! eewww. In Texas, it's actually illegal to shoot the nasty things, but I can't see any other way of getting rid of it. I guess if it's injured or sick, you won't have to worry about it much longer.
My dh is a director of housekeeping for a hospital...on one of his clinic inspections he found an interesting thing: in an internal solarium type garden room the clinic has a nesting family of buzzards...they didn't really think that was the kind of image a health clinic would like to portray, but they can't get them to leave, so they've just "adopted" them as a clinic mascot. They told him that several nest/hatching have happened there. Dh reported that there were ugly little fuzzy baby buzzards right there in the nest. LOL! What a thing to have in a clinic...of course, they'd have to be more interesting than the old magazines!
Yes, I was thinking...a shotgun would do the trick :evil: but that may not be up your alley. :lol: On the other hand you may be putting him out of his misery...
Our feathered "friend" is back! And here's what I have discovered about him or her. (A quick lesson in biology for anyone interested!) Our friend is a red headed vulture or turkey buzzard. According to the website (The Vulture Society- not joking) the turkey buzzard is very passive and non- confrontational. It won't kill in order to eat unlike its' cousin the black headed vulture. It will eat small bugs, some types of fruit and fresh water mussels if it can't find carrion. It will only eat something that is still alive (but in the process of dying) in extreme circumstances. The turkey buzzard can't make sounds because it has no voice box/ vocal cords. It can only hiss as an adult when it feels threatened and grunts as a juvenile when its' hungry. Distinguishing between male and female is virtually impossible without close examination which I ain't doin'! Our little friend walks around very comfortably when left alone. If you approach to shoo it away it will "play possum". You can push it over onto it's back (with a broom) and it will lay there likes its dead. Walk away and it stands back up. It's against national law to kill turkey buzzards. It is possible that this one is part of a mated pair with a nest close by which might explain why its' not leaving the area. Since it is so passive, appears to be content with our "company" and by law there isn't much I can do with it unless it is in obvious distress or sick, it would now appear as though we have a pet turkey buzzard! My ds is thrilled! Good news is that turkey buzzards migrate from Ohio in the fall! See what all you can learn when you live on a farm and guess what our science lesson is on for homeschooling today! Marty
We have (we call them turkey vultures in these parts ) all over the place here. We had 8 of them sitting on the ridge of our new house last summer. We had a sense of impending dread! :lol: Followed by laughing about who they were waiting on to die. Sorry, we are warped. And Gardenturtle....not a good sign for patients to have vultures choosing to nest there! No need to ask the infection rate anymore. Just find out if vultures are hanging out! :lol:
Maybe we should having a naming contest!:lol: Dh thinks the nest might be out near an old tractor shed we don't very much. He saw the buzzard hanging around out there this morning. Brooke- we were checking off some of the neighbors and some of our older animals "guessing" which one was going to "bite the dust" first. :shock: All our neighbors are still vertical and the animals are on all fours so we're ok! :lol: Marty
I know a lot of folks don't care for vultures, but I don't think I could resist the urge to toss it some scraps every now and again. A vulture has adopted you! How cool is that?
Update Just to let you all know. Dh found "Snoopy" (the buzzard) dead this morning in the barn yard. Not sure what was the cause although we assume natural. No outward signs of any trauma. Maybe old age? Dh took care of him/her so no other animals would come around. Maybe it thought we would be good to spend the last days with. Marty
Oh, I'm so sorry. At least his last days were spent with people who took the time to get to know him a bit.
