We're married to the vultures, ba ba ba da da ohhhh yeah.

For the full effect of my rambling, I suggest listening to the song "American Vultures" by The Blood Brothers. For full effect of said song, I suggest you listen to their album "March On, Electric Children". To get the full affect of said album, I suggest you listen to their entire discography and mourn them with me.

Anyway.

There is a distinction between "old" and "new" vultures thanks to convergent evolution. (Take that, biology class I failed) "New" vultures are the ones we have largely in North America-- hawks. "Old World Vultures", along with having the coolest friggin name ever are also the more traditional, intimidating, hook beaked (Accipitridae) birds that are grade A nightmare material.



Side note that these birds are what resemble the plague doctor masks; which as creepy as they are, aren't as interesting as I would have hoped. The hooked beak looking part of the mask was to keep potpourri and pleasant herbs as it was believed that it was the smell of the rotting dead was the cause of the plague. Good job, guys. Sometimes I want to go back in time, explain to them what community college is, tell them that I attend it, and then explain to them all the mysteries of the world that they can't figure out are. BASIC ALGEBRA WOAH. Anyway.




This is Lammergeier, or the bearded vulture. Let's go over this.

1. Holy shit, this thing is fucking terrifying. I'd shit everyone's pants if I saw this son of a bitch in the wild somewhere.
2. They are HUGE. 10 foot wingspan. It would probably eat your dog. (maybe)
   
3. No seriously this thing is freaky as shit. I'd put a collar on it and cart it around on Halloween and be like "BOO MOTHER FUCKER".
   
4. Bonus! They look like they're wearing bell-bottom pants. Hah.
   
5. DOUBLE BONUS. It has a mustache. LOOK CAREFULLY.
6. Yanno what Lammergeier means in goddamn german? Lamb Vulture. It will eat your livestock. (this isn't proven, this was the 1700's and everyone was crazy. Simply a belief they held)
   

COOLEST BIRD EVER RIGHT? What I particularly enjoy about it (besides my now fully developed fantasy of wandering around with it on a collar. . . partially thanks to the Blood Brothers-- OR IS THE VULTURE WAAAAAALKING YOU?) is that it doesn't eat rotting meat like most vultures- it eats the marrow. It has this developed technique of dropping bones off onto rocks to crack them open to get to it that can apparently take 7 years to master.

However, Iranian mythology considers the sight of one good luck.

Shit is fucking ridiculous. There's something poetic to be said here for a vulture that looks like a cracked out vulture from hell that doesn't eat rotting meat like other vultures. How lovely and strange to be the epitome of your species and to take it raise yourself into a hellish level by denying a rotting corpse, pull out its bones, crush them, and eat them.

Unfortunately I'm not feeling poetic, I'm feeling like a caffeinated asshole. Maybe later.