Lift Up Your Hearts!

On one of our recent bike rides, we came upon a dead armadillo.  Dead armadillos happen not infrequently in Florida.  They may be faster in crossing a road than turtles, but they will dawdle.  Worse, their startle reaction is to leap straight into the air, dooming them even when a car would otherwise pass harmlessly over them.

This one had apparently managed to crawl from the road to the nearby bicycle trail, but not before the vultures got wind of the event.  Porter was biking a little ahead of me, and I saw them beginning to circle as he approached.  A few had descended upon the poor beast by the time he rode by.  His presence more annoyed than scared them.  When I reached the scene there were at least a dozen blanketing the pavement, and I chose to veer off the trail and leave them to their vicitim.

Vultures are ugly birds, and their behavior was uglier:  fighting, shoving, greedily tearing the little armadillo apart.  By the time we came to that part of the train on our return trip, there was nothing left but a dark spot on the pavement.

And that's the point.  Carrion-eaters may be ugly, dirty things, but they are also God's creatures, and their work is important.  They are the garbage collectors of the natural world, and they, too, deserve the more lofty title of "sanitation engineers."  Maybe even more so, because they don't just cart the bodies off to the landfill; they are the ultimate recyclers.

I'd rather see a sandhill crane, or a woodpecker, or an egret on our rides any day.  But if there's a dead armadillo on the trail...Who you gonna call?