When Vulchers Come To Roost

Sometimes a parable tells the obvious better than plain English. Some people are deaf and blind to reality. Here is such a tale.

A morality tale that can only offend those to whom it applies.

The seasons had been long. The old bird who watched over everything laid down his head and rested. He fell into the long sleep of death. Ever circling around, they waited for their turn at the nest and the hidden treasures rumored to lie within.

While the old bird still moved around, they feared him, but not too much now that he was old and getting older. They circled closer and closer. They hovered nearer and nearer. Ever braver, even to the taking meat that the old bird left out. Their habit became living off of whatever the old bird left out and did not take for himself.

There was a she bird that came to help the old bird and would keep the vulchers at bay, but she left for a season. While she was gone, all the vulchers swooped in and laid claim to whatever there was as if it was their own. She was replaced by another she-bird who became a vulcher just as much as the others, even though close to the old bird. The results of vulchers have ever been the same. The detritus and debris of their roosting and rooting showed quickly. The nest that had seen goodly care for so many seasons had fallen on quite hard times.

Then the day came. The old bird laid his head down for the last time and slept the long sleep.

While calls went out for others like the old bird, it was too late. The vulchers crowded in around the she bird who was no longer able to ward them off. The vulchers did not fear her like they had the old bird. She fought them off as best she could. Even with the assistance of others, she was no longer able to push them back. The nest was picked through and stripped of any good and worthwhile thing. All of the stores in the larder of the old bird were picked through and taken like spoils of war. The rumored treasures were no where to be found. The vulchers dug through everything, nothing was not overturned in their mad pursuits. Jealousies and haranguing arguments over bits of scrap flew into near violent rages.

There were other birds like the old bird who could only watch at a distance as the old bird's nest was laid waste. Raising their voices they would come in close to the nest or cry out to be heard, to no avail. The caws and crows and louder and louder shouts over rights and privileges of one vulcher over the next drowned out any attempt at reason or order or voice of concern for those things that were the old bird's once treasured things.

As the dust and cawing settled down, the vulchers looked around at what they wrought. No hidden treasures were found. No hidden cache to supply their addictions of parasitic lifestyles. Nothing was left but the nests themselves.

With tears in their eyes and hearts heavy with dispair, those who remembered the old bird and all that he did left the area of the old bird's nest and flew away. The vulchers in their frenzy made no note of the passing, so focused was their lust on what they got. Gone in a flicker was all the old bird spent a lifetime collecting, fighting for, protecting, and sharing ... even with those vulchers nearest him.

In a memorial for the old bird, it was discovered that he had given away most of his treasures while he was still alive. He had been a bird of the wild who had settled down to his nest. He had been a wild young eagle that had become a gray old bird, doing what he could for his and those he could help.  He and his she-bird had acquired a few things over the seasons, and they always seem to have something for someone when they came along. There was always room for one more. Try as they may, they had tried to raise eagles of their own. When the eaglets, one by one, left, they thought they had succeeded. But some of the eaglets that left returned; not as eagles with their own nests, but as vulchers, picking only what they could find from whatever the old bird would leave out for them. They had become vulchers, living off of scraps. They forgot they were eagles, the greatest of aerial hunters. Instead, they were vulchers fighting over who got what off of the dead. The old bird was an eagle whose offspring had somehow become vulchers, living off of scraps and carcasses of the dead or dying.

Those who are eagles must learn to be eagles. They must go and do and be who they are meant to be.

Those who are from eagles can so easily becomes vulchers, only living off of the scraps and the carcasses of the dead or dying. They do not go. They do not do. They do not be who they are meant to be. They, instead, become vulchers.

So disappointing.

Author's Note

I have my moments of pique, so I write it out instead of lashing it out. Wot?