Adapting to the local environment

 The enormous dog saw it first: a turkey vulture, on the ground, investigating a storm drain.

The big bird would stick its head down the drain. Whenever it heard a car, it would come back away from the drain and stand by the road until the car passed.

The dog looked at me as if to ask if this kind of thing were OK. I didn’t know. I’d never seen such a thing.

A turkey vulture, Carthartes aura, is called a buzzard in Texas. I’ve never seen one that would allow a human — much less a human with a dog —get so close. 

What’s going on?

As far as I can tell, there’s not a level square yard of naturally occurring earth in this part of the Georgia Piedmont. If you fall, you’re going to roll for a while before you come to a stop.

This part of Georgia also is wet — at least by the standards I’m used to. We get a lot of rainfall and the water runs. Little rivulets become streams, and the gutters of paved streets become something I’d call a creek in Texas.

Pine cones, tree limbs and other things — including, I imagine, the carcasses of small animals that die in the woods — end up in the stream.

At least one buzzard around here has learned to check the street drains.