Misconceptions of an Angry Bird

We were on our morning drive out to the country to drop the kids off at school when we passed by a group of vultures swarming, feasting on what at this point was an unrecognizable animal. Driving past what seemed to be a horrific & sad sight, Zephan cleared his throat & spoke up, "You know mom, vultures are God's cleaners. They're actually cleaning up the mess." Hmmm, I’d never thought about it or looked into what exactly vultures are doing when they so viciously rip apart the carcasses of other creatures. I guess I'd always thought of them as violent, angry birds that you should steer clear of. Both skeptical & fascinated, I went home and looked it up. I found that vultures very rarely take out healthy creatures and only sometimes kill the wounded or sick. In most cases, they are in fact just eating & cleaning up the mess from already dead animals. Without vultures removing all that decaying meat, both air and groundwater would be majorly contaminated. In parts of the world where there are fewer vultures there’s a lot more disease since the carcasses take 3 to 4 times longer to decompose which has huge ramifications.

Also fascinating is the fact that God gave vultures stomach acid that is extremely corrosive, allowing them to safely digest rotting carcasses infected with Botulinum toxin, hog cholera, and anthrax bacteria that would be deadly to other scavengers. Also he made them so that they pee straight down their legs; the uric acid kills bacteria accumulated from walking through carcasses. Pretty amazing. So vultures are in fact bringing us all a service & doing exactly what they were created to do. But it sure doesn’t look like anything even remotely good or helpful when we see them ripping, swarming & tearing apart sweet little animal carcasses.

This whole enlightenment of the vulture made me think about they way we view one another. We are so quick to make judgments about people & situations based on what we think we see & know, when in fact we don't get close enough or invest time & energy into people's lives to find out more. We just write off what we don't understand & in my opinion, miss out on so much by doing so. Next time you come across someone or something that you want to make a fast judgment on….take a minute, look a little deeper, get to know that person/situation. You may be surprised to find out they aren't as horrible as you thought & that they have something from their life & journey that you can learn from. My guess is after listening to their story & looking them in the eye, you may be better for having known them & might even have made a new, unexpected friend. Things aren't always what they seem, in fact they rarely are.