Childe Buzzard to the Dark Tower Came
November 16th, 2006 by 
Bradley Denton
Barb and I go for a walk with our three dogs every morning before sunrise. As we leave our driveway in the gray light and head toward the end of our street, our view is dominated by an enormous cell-phone tower.
I hated the thing when it was erected a few years ago, because it destroyed my illusion of rural seclusion. It’s at least three hundred feet high. I mean, it must be. It’s huge. It could be the base of a space elevator. It’s as stark and metallic as Gort the Robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Only a lot bigger. It wounds my blue sky and casts a shadow over my green yard.
Yet it serves a purpose, and I know it has to be somewhere. We postmodern humans, we gots to have us our cell phones.
Soon after the tower’s appearance, however, I was reminded that other residents of the world will find their own uses for man’s devices.
You see, our cell-phone tower is now the permanent nighttime home of over a hundred black-headed buzzards. Big, ugly buzzards. The kind you see playing tug-of-war with whole deer carcasses.
Every morning when Barb and I begin our walk, there they are . . . just waking up, clacking their talons on the reverberant steel and stretching their great dark wings as they prepare to leap away and soar in search of the dead.
Once, I counted a hundred and twenty of them before I decided I didn’t want to know how many there were. Sometimes the tower is black-feathered from top to bottom. Other days, there aren’t so many. But I can’t recall a morning when there were none. And those who are there always watch us as we walk by.
This must be a metaphor for something.
Barb and I always glance at each other and say the same thing:
“Look alive,” we say.
Thirty minutes later, when we return, the buzzards are leaving for their daily rounds.
They’re beautiful when they fly.
Posted in Barb, Brad, Daily Life, Technology | 
November 19th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
8 comments moved from Blogger
Caroline Spector said…
Brad, you got any idea of the range of those suckers?
I swear I saw one of them in the middle of Shoal Creek Blvd the other day eating a squirrel.
11/16/2006 5:37 PM
Caroline Spector said…
a dead squirrel, that is . . .
11/16/2006 5:37 PM
Madeleine Robins said…
“Look alive.”
And how do you do that? A little soft shoe? It’s a nice image. Bradley and Barb and the dogs, dancing away the buzzards.
11/16/2006 8:43 PM
Rory Harper said…
We’ve lately been getting them hanging out during the day on the balconies on the fifth and sixth floors of the building where I office.
They’re fearless, and will watch you back from less than three feet away through the glass. Huge beasts, and quite handsome, except for the gruesomely ugly heads.
Presumably, they like our place because it’s the tallest building in sight, and has a splendid view.
From here, if you’ve got buzzard-vision, you can see dead things for miles and miles (I’d like to point out the half-witty Who reference I just made, for those of you who might have missed it…).
11/17/2006 9:21 AM
Steven Gould said…
And for the obligatory Star Trek reference: “Something’s dead, Jim.”
(I love the smell of rotting meat in the morning!)
11/17/2006 9:31 AM
Maureen McHugh said…
Brad, that is the coolest thing ever. I looked at the photo and thought it was a kind of artsy shot of a cell phone tower, started reading and went back and really looked and thought ‘whoa.’ And it does redeem the tower.
(Whistling Dan Hicks’ “The Buzzard Was His Friend”)
11/17/2006 9:58 AM
Bradley Denton said…
Caroline: I’m no buzzard expert, despite the fact that they’re my neighbors . . . but I suspect they can easily cover the twenty-odd miles between here and Shoal Creek Blvd. They fly high and (I assume) far. The one you saw noshing on the squirrel the other day may well have been on our tower that night, comparing Dead Things I Have Eaten notes with the others.
Madeleine: It’s not so much a “soft shoe” as it is a “nervous shuffle.”
Rory: A “half-witty Who reference” necessarily prompts the question “Who references a half-wit?” (I can hear the chorus now: “Anyone quoting Denton!”)
Steve: Knew you did.
Maureen: Yup, every black spot in that photo is a buzzard. And that wasn’t even an especially crowded morning on the Dark Tower.
11/17/2006 12:19 PM
Morgan J Locke said…
Buzzard condos. I love it.
11/17/2006 12:26 PM
November 20th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
So you guys practice any pagan rituals? In league with Satan? Seen any angels opening seals or pouring out bowls of the wrath of God? Anything like that?
What you are describing is most likely the American Black Vulture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Black_Vulture) as long as you live somewhere in the Southern US. If not then they may just be Turkey Vultures. But with the black heads. If you see the heads are red or happen to live in Wisconsin then you are probably looking at Turkey Vultures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Vulture).
These guys are actually related most closely to storks! You also probably are safe from the Apocalypse and just happen to have a nearby meat packing plant, butchering yard, or somewhere there is a lot of disposed of offal. Maybe even just a municipal dump.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
Play dead! See how long till they come over! Sounds like instant YouTube footage!
November 20th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Don’t go near the bottom of the tower without noseplugs! The droppings stink horribly since they eat carrion. I’ve been near a buzzard roost. Once was enough!
When they fly high and circle over carrion, they are alerting their roost mates that food lays below. They can see at least 30 miles, and the others will converge.
Patty P
November 21st, 2006 at 2:28 am
[…] Childe Buzzard to the Dark Tower Came You see, our cell-phone tower is now the permanent nighttime home of over a hundred black-headed buzzards. Big, ugly buzzards. The kind you see playing tug-of-war with whole deer carcasses. […]
November 21st, 2006 at 7:39 am
I wonder if these marvelous, though visually jarring, birds would be suitable for use in the age-old funerary rite of sky burial. The reverence afforded their vulture cousins in ancient Egypt and even today in Southern Asia is well deserved. Evidently the native species there has all but disappeared due to some environmental assault. Were sky burial an option here I’d seriously consider it for myself when that inevitable time arrives; happy to know that my bones, neatly stored away in a nicely appointed crypt, might serve as a reminder of life’s unavoidable consequences.
November 21st, 2006 at 9:03 am
Ominous… Reminds me of the crows amassing in The Sandman.
November 21st, 2006 at 2:21 pm
They’ve taken over another tower near my friend’s new house, not far from where you are. It’s just off of 290 and Springdale, in a brand new subdivision. There were over 50 on the tower, not 100 feet from his backyard.
What’s up with all the buzzards in Austin? They seem to be massing and congregating…. perhaps to plot against the bats.
November 21st, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Buzzards do hunt by sight but they are one of the rare bird species with a sensitive sense of smell, so more often they are sniffing out their stinky dead food from many miles away
November 22nd, 2006 at 4:14 pm
First they’re on your cell tower the next thing you know, they’re in your school!
November 22nd, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Turkey Vultures, TV for short.
“Buzzard is the correct term for a family of hawks. (ie the European buzzard, Buteo buteo, closely related to the American red tailed hawk). In America, the term is often employed incorrectly to describe vultures. This probably dates back to the arrival of the first English colonists. There are no vultures of any type in England, so these pioneers probably gave the common term ‘buzzard’ to all the soaring figures above the New World.”
http://vulturesociety.homestead.com/TVFacts.html
You ain’t seen nothin’ till you see how the roosting TVs in Palmetto SP.
November 24th, 2006 at 12:01 am
[…] Link […]
November 28th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
We have a picture taken in Brad’s back yard of Andrew lounging, talking on the cell phone, with 3 vultures in the tree watching. He’s the one who should look alive!
December 2nd, 2006 at 3:28 pm
[…] To quote Bradley from his Buzzards post, “They’re beautiful when they fly.” […]
January 11th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
[…] Five weeks ago, workmen climbed the cell phone tower described in my post of November 16 (“Childe Buzzard to the Dark Tower Came”) to install additional gigantic cables and metallic doohickeys. And ever since they did that, the hundreds of buzzards who used to roost on the tower every night have refused to return. […]
April 12th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I was told they will take down a full grown cow and remove the eyes, then start on the other end until the animal dies. Now there are four black headed buzzards roosting by my barn, evidently eyeing my llama and two tiny goats! We are all afraid.
October 12th, 2007 at 12:14 am
[…] Best Place to See a Deer Carcass Stripped Down to the Spine by Buzzards: The ditch along Bliss Spillar Road, about two hundred yards west of the Dark Tower. […]
November 12th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
[…] Check it out. Especially the Vultures. […]