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Carrion Luggage

Carrion Luggage

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Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.

This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.

It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.

It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."

I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.


December 19, 2025 at 10:38am
December 19, 2025 at 10:38am
#1103950
Yeah, this one's been in my pile for a few months, and it's dated early July. I doubt many people are swimming there today.

    Paris reopens Seine River for public swimming  Open in new Window.
Parisians have begun bathing in the Seine for the first time in over 100 years after a ban was lifted. The French capital has created three swimming zones along the river as part of its Olympic legacy.


If I were a lesser person, I'd make a joke about "Parisians have begun bathing..." But I'm not going to stoop so low as to make that implication. Why, I wouldn't even approach it tangentially.

France's capital Paris reopened the Seine River to swimmers on Saturday for the first time in over a century.

Journalism at its finest, folks. I'm sure no one had any idea that Paris is the capital of France.

Paris authorities have created three outdoor pool zones, complete with changing rooms and showers and supervised by lifeguards.

If the Seine is so clean, why would they need showers?

The swimming zones also have beach-style furniture, offering space for 150 to 300 people to sunbathe.

No word on nudity?

Bathing in the Seine was officially banned in 1923, primarily due to health risks from pollution.

"We can either fix pollution, or ban swimming. Let's ban swimming."

Around €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) was spent on improving water quality, which officials promised would benefit not just the Olympic athletes but residents and tourists for years to come.

Jokes aside for the moment, this is a civil engineering effort, so of course I appreciate it. I'll probably never know the details of all they did, but it's one of those things where the work will go largely unnoticed by the general public, but serves them.
*Thought*  Comment   •   View 1 comment


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