Boston Cream Pie and a Vulture Party

Bob and I had been gone all week visiting my brother, James, in Massachusetts for his birthday. I had just turned 70 and Jamie was turning 59.

The three of us spent two nights on South Yarmouth in the wake of Hurricane Beryl. We enjoyed some refreshing barefoot beach time and James went for a short swim.

And then James drove us inland to celebrate his birthday with pizza, cake, and ice cream at his new home outside of Boston where we were joined by his stepdaughter and her family.

Christina and Lou’s seven kids bounced around Jamie’s lush lawn, taking turns on the swing between bites of pizza at the picnic table. No one threw up.

This was the best pizza I’d eaten in years. It had a thin, slightly salty, crispy, yet foldable crust, with blackened dough blisters, a spicy sauce, and not too much cheese. In other words, it was New York style pizza like we used to get on our birthdays from Freddie’s in West Long Branch, New Jersey.

No birthday is complete without cake and ice cream, so we did that, too.

~*~

Bob and I returned home to discover deer tracks in the garden. They had taken out a pepper plant and decimated the edamame. I tightened the clothesline I’d strung above the four-foot livestock fence in a lame attempt to fend off another garden attack, made dinner, and we went to bed and fell asleep wondering how we were going to solve our deer problem.

Bob found her the next morning, a lactating doe that had been hit by a Ford truck during the night. Problem solved. We didn’t take her picture out of respect for the dead. After picking the big plastic “R” and other truck parts out of the grass, we went inside and waited for the clean up crew.

Soon enough the vultures began to arrive. Lyle and Carrie had watched a breeding pair of Black vultures raise two chicks at their place half a mile away and we were pretty sure a group of four who were nearly always together were the same family. We were thrilled to have them at our place and be able to share our friends’ experience.

About three days in, the intermittent whiff of rot began spoiling our summer afternoon spa time. But it was short-lived—in this heat, roadkill decomposes at an accelerated pace—and a couple of days later we resumed our refreshing cold water (88°) soaks.

Although the family of four birds were the same size, we could tell the youngsters from their parents by the baby fluff around their heads and necks.

I confess that Black vultures are among my top three favorite birds along with Great blue herons and Carolina wrens.

Unlike other birds, vultures spend a lot of time standing around. They don’t have to flit about chasing bugs or searching for seeds, worrying about getting picked off by cats and hawks. Vultures are so big, they don’t worry about much of anything. They waddled up near the garden to watch Bob work, as interested in us as we were in them.

We learned that when vultures blink, they look like sharks.

Bob and I were struck by their affection towards each other and were reminded of our time in Massachusetts with Jamie and family.

Family is where you find it. Sometimes you might have to board an airplane to see them. Sometimes family comes to you after a deer gets hit on the Moncure Pittsboro Road. Either way, families make life more interesting by reminding us that we were all young once and that we are all hurtling through space on the same planet, doing our best to stay happy and fed.