Impressions from a dinner party

The Hellenic and Latinate ornateness of the names, "raven-vulture cloaked in black" and "golden purifier", so at odds with western perceptions of the birds...

The Serengeti politics of the proceedings... The utter self-assurance of the BVs as they stride up to assume possession of the carcass, the calm resignation of the TVs as they stand aside to relinquish the same, for what bird could be more inclined to fatalism than a turkey vulture...

The heat, the stench, the clouds of flies, the indifference of the birds to all of these...

The intimacy and apparent gentleness of the feeding, a bill nuzzling into the hair to snip a morsel of sustenance from the body, a sort of communion...

Intimacy and communion of another sort, too, that only occurs when the living confront the dead. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well...

Above all, the ordinariness of the scene, for as dramatic as it may seem to us mortals, and as final as it may seem for the deer, the reality is that this happens every day, that it will happen every day, that the birds are rightly confident in its happening every day...