Buzzards

Okay, technically turkey vultures, but we called them buzzards growing up. They'd circle the thermals out in the country, waiting for something to die. Since they're vultures they're carrion birds which means they eat dead animals, but you knew that. In the mornings in West Texas, where they have to roost on the ground, you can see them standing on fence posts with their wings outstretched to dry so they can begin the day's scavenging. They're big too, like two or three feet tall. And stink... whoo boy. They're all over the countryside around Texas.
   And now, evidently, they're operating well within the San Antonio city limits.
   Time was you knew you were in the country when you started seeing buzzards. Last week I saw two of them perched on a lamp post near my house, and just today I saw two perched on a lamp post near my mother's house. Two different sets of buzzards, lurking in suburban neighborhoods.
   Unless they were the same two buzzards both times, stalking me as they wait for me to keel over from the heat...
   Ignoring my paranoid conspiracies, I don't think having turkey vultures in town is a good thing. Aside from them being terribly ugly and not at all in keeping with the non-Gothic architecture, vultures are country birds, they don't belong on lamp posts. And yet, there they are, like Beaky Buzzard* in Death Valley.
   Why?
   What has changed to bring turkey vultures into the city? And I don't mean on the fringes, I mean smack dab in the middle, with miles to go in any direction before they find what used to be their natural habitat.
   Kind of scary, if you think about it. I don't mean in my paranoid 'are the buzzards following me?' kind of way, I mean in the 'why did a species of wild animal change its habits so drastically?' way.
   Besides, they creep me out, hanging around like my street is some kind of Old West Boot Hill. They need to go find a dead armadillo or something and leave me the hell alone.


*reference courtesy of the Warner Bros Archive of Cartoons Kids Don't Watch Nowadays