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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
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.
August 14, 2025 at 7:48am August 14, 2025 at 7:48am
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The theme for this Atlas Obscura article is clearly not timely here in August, but there are good reasons to consider this essential information that's valuable year-round.
Those reasons are:
1) There is no one time of year to eat burgers. It's not like it's eggnog, which is only acceptable in December.
2) Lots of people who see this on the internet are from places where July 4 isn't a special holiday; and
3) The holiday has become irrelevant in the US, as most of the country's founding principles have been shredded.
Now, the article itself is short, with links to the specific burger recipes. Consequently, I'll be brief, as well.
I am firmly anti-gimmick burger. A well-grilled patty on a soft bun is already a fine dish that needs little embellishment. So every time I see a new version with foie-gras filling or doughnut buns, I cringe.
Okay, I'm not entirely contrarian to what this author is saying, but, for starters, "doughnut buns" aren't something new and inspired; they're a long-standing tradition in my town, one that's even older than I am. Burgers on donuts were originally called, as I understand it, "grillswiths." As this is a college town, it's not surprising that the idea spread to other places, but it's not some sort of "new version."
For finishers, there's another long-standing tradition, this one pretty much global, that you take street food and/or subsistence food and, later, embellish it with variations that can be labeled "fancy" or "high-class," like the aforementioned foie gras, or caviar, or one place I vaguely remember that put gold flakes on their burgers just for the novelty of it (and probably for the 1000% markup opportunity).
But I will always hold a place in my heart for the slugburger. A Depression-era hack meant to stretch meager meat supplies, the recipe combines ground beef or pork with potato flour.
This will probably never work in the next Great Depression, as ground beef/pork has stopped being a cheap food.
From a Prohibition-era speakeasy that still slings bitters-filled patties to a roadside stand that’s carrying on a century-old tradition of steaming burgers, American history is filled with unusual burgers born of unusual times.
Like I said, burgers have slipped past our border controls and can be found in lots of different places. The article has links to six specifically American burgers, but who knows what burger variations you might find on the streets of some foreign and exotic land? |
© Copyright 2025 Robert Waltz (UN: cathartes02 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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Who knew I was just obeying the commands of some tiny bit of non-thinking protein? 
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