“Vulture" has traditionally been hurled as a term of disgust, especially at lawyers (unless its your lawyer) and various soulless beings who take advantage of helpless victims.  This is an insult to vultures!

Most people on the planet hate or fear vultures, however some enlightened folks took a second look at the true ecological value of the big, ugly, scary birds and decided to mount a public awareness campaign on behalf of these misunderstood flying “bio-disposal units”. 

Vultures probably suffered one of their biggest “image” disasters in March of 1993 when South African photojournalist Kevin Carter took a shocking picture of a malnourished Sudanese toddler sitting in a field with a vulture in the background, waiting for the little girl to die.  This photo was immediately seen around the world and earned Carter a Pulitzer Prize.  Tragically, Carter committed suicide 4 months after the photo was taken. 

Despite the “evil” and “macabre” mythology surrounding vultures, those who realize the important role they play in the

overall ecological structure have set aside this month as “Vulture Appreciation” month, with September 5^th, 2009 declared as “International Vulture Awareness Day”.

Here in this part of the North American Continent, we have 3 three kinds of vultures.  The most commonly seen are the Black Vulture and the Turkey Vulture.  The bizarre looking King Vulture flies here too but he is harder to spot. 

Although we must have missed it, the Jaco Beach “Vulture Appreciation Day Parade” should have been quite an event, with performances by the “Buzzard Beats” drum and xylophone marching band, kids dressed up in their vulture costumes and road kill-decorated floats. 

A blue ribbon probably was awarded to the winner of the simulated-projectile-vomiting-contest with the 1^st place distance measured at 10’ 6” (some vultures do this when cornered).  Unfortunately, this actually didn’t happen in our little beach city, but in one New Jersey, U.S.A. town, it did.  The Wenonah, New Jersey “East Coast Vulture Festival”  http://www.eastcoastvulturefestival.org/index.htm was quite a notable event as folks came from many miles away to participate in costumed dancing, lectures and various, vulture-themed merrymaking. 

In some parts of the world vulture populations have dwindled so much that “vulture restaurants” have been started to ensure a safe and reliable food supply.  People have started figuring out that when there aren’t enough vultures around, the ecosystem becomes out of balance with rats and other potentially disease carrying species overproducing.  

VULTURE RESTAURANT

When their environment goes out of kilter, and they don’t get enough to eat, then they do become bolder.  Well fed vultures are happy vultures!  In most places vultures are illegal to be kept as pets but Celio from Brazil loves his pet Urubu Vulture named Loira.  They travel together when Celio takes Loira out for exhibitions (she usually sleeps in the hotel bathroom---don’t tell).  Here’s a link to video showing Celio and his pet Loira interacting with some people at a park.   http://vimeo.com/1547752 A healthy, abundant vulture population is an indicator of a healthy ecosystem.  There are various reasons for vultures not surviving in the wild and those causes differ within each ecosystem.                   

CELIO AND LOIRA

Loss of habitat from construction, electrocution from electrical wires and one of the most serious reasons vultures are disappearing involves cattle.  When cattle or sheep die, the vulture is there to take care of the carcass in the natural way.  Because of  modern day farming practices, pesticides that are used on grazing vegetation get passed on to the vulture when it feeds on a cattle carcass. 

To make matters even more lethal, cattle are often injected with chemicals like antibiotics, hormones and the anti-inflammatory drug called diclofenac (aka voltaren, aka voltarol).  This drug may even be in your own family’s medicine cabinet but when ingested by a vulture it causes slow, painful death from kidney failure. 

Humans haven’t always caused vultures so much trouble.  Back in ancient Egyptian times when gods and goddesses were really cool there was the goddess Mut, who is often portrayed in artwork with a vulture headdress symbolizing motherhood, bonding and love.  Not everyone today thinks of these attributes when they see vultures but the big birds do mate for life, both take care of the kids and they are always seen in pairs. 

Egyptians felt that since vultures soared so high in the air that they were closer to their sun god.  The vulture became the Egyptian symbol for southern Egypt and can be seen on the golden headdress of King Tutankhamen next to a cobra, symbol of northern Egypt.  About 3000 years ago a group of people known as Zoroastrians (followers of the world’s oldest monotheistic religion) or later known as Parsis, lived in Iran (Persia) and migrated to India. 

They believed in maintaining the “sacredness of creations and all natural elements”.  The seven Creations, defined as Sky, Water, Earth, Plant, Animal, Man and Fire were not to be defiled by any dead matter, including a corpse. Their sacred texts provided the particular method of body disposal---exposure. 

This began what is known as “Sky Burials”. Still practiced today in some societies, bodies are transported to “Towers of Silence” which usually are built on hilltops.  Open at the top with flat roofs, corpses are laid out exposed to the elements.  After the sun, weather and vultures have finished the process, the bones are placed in the middle, which is a deep hole; the final receptacle for the corpses.                                                             

As it turns out, current “green” thinking would rate a sky burial as ecologically sound.  Modern methods of burial have actually done quite a lot of “defiling” on a number of the seven creations.  If it was just the human body itself that was the only potential contamination factor then it would be only a matter of making sure groundwater quality was protected from the normal biology of decay. 

However, a new X factor was introduced to the “non-use-of-vultures-corpse-disposal” methods during the American Civil War.  Embalming bodies of dead soldiers was first invented during this time as a necessity in order to preserve corpses long enough for the trip home to grieving relatives.  The active ingredient chosen for this task was arsenic. 

This powerful element effectively stopped the process of decay but it had an unintended consequence.  Heavy rains flushed the toxic arsenic out of deteriorating wooden caskets into drinking water supplies.  Arsenic was eventually banned and replaced with formaldehyde.  Even that chemical is under scrutiny and now being replaced. 

In the Mountains of South America lives the Andean Condor, a giant vulture that grows to be 4 feet long with a 10 foot wingspread. The Incas worshiped them and built The Temple of the Condor at Machu Picchu, Peru. 

As early as the 1900s the Condor population began rapidly declining from harmful environmental practices and killing them based on ignorance.  These days, observation, education and enforcement have slowed their demise but not stopped it.  In the western coastal mountains of California and Mexico, the California Condor has been successfully brought back from near extinction by over 3 decades of effort.                                                         

The years of hard work devoted to the Gymnogyps Californianus, included a bit of a tricky, stealth mode technique of avoiding, as much as possible, the “V” word (vulture) in all press releases, website wording and video publicity.  There are still Californians living in heavily populated areas that, after more than 30 years of  “Save the California Condor” campaigns, haven’t actually seen one and still don’t realize the California Condor is a vulture or the “B” word, a buzzard.

These massive flying machines soar for hours on thermal air currents, sometimes at extremely high altitudes.  The highest vulture flight ever recorded was over The Ivory Coast of Africa, when a Ruppell’s Griffon vulture was sucked into a jet engine at 11,277 meters/36,998 feet!  The aircraft landed safely but not so the vulture.

Vultures have been used in Warner Bros. cartoons and Disney put them in a Donald Duck cartoon and the Jungle Book movie.  If it’s been awhile since you’ve seen this buzzard quartet, click on the next link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2izecg1TV1U&feature=related . 

Vulture logos are used for radio stations, breweries, bars, a hockey team, a baseball club and the newest rock band that is generating a ton and a half of anticipation, “Them Crooked Vultures”.  TCV consists of David Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana), Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, Desert Sessions, Eagles of Death Metal, Screaming Trees), and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin). 

This trio can be genuinely referred to as a “Super Group’, although hopefully that moniker won’t be the kiss of death since previous SGs have sometimes fizzled.  Without even releasing one song yet, they’ve still managed, through word of mouth, YouTube snippets, Twitter, Facebook, etc., to generate an enormous demand for their musical product as well as TCV merchandise and for tickets to their announced concert dates in the U.S. and Europe.  Here’s two of their snippet teasers from YouTube (click to view ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYYdli0P8YI  and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBckNeRMXDY&NR=1

Editor’s note—Admittedly, Jacosun has not done a very bang-up job of enhancing the image of vultures; but that is now in the past.  To take a look at how unsympathetic we used to be, click this link below, scroll down to the vulture photo and the “Clean Up Committee” story, click the red “read more” for a video of some local Black Vultures taking a dead dog down to bare bones.  The footage was captured from just a few feet away from the vultures.  They didn’t seem to mind the curious spectator with the camera.

http://www.jacosun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=15&Itemid=32

POSTED 9-27-2009

Horse parade (Tope) pictures here, with story and more pictures below---

HITCHING UP THE MORGANS

JAVIER and JOSUE

VICTOR and ORLANDO

is Horse Country.                                                           

Ever since the Spanish Conquistadors brought over their horses in the 15th and 16^th century, this country has been in love with everything equine. 

We have observed that generally, horses in Costa Rica are the best treated “companion” animals above all others.  Valued for their multiple uses as work, transportation, food and pet type animals, any excuse to parade a horse, decked out in its best finery, is used.                                                          

Called a Tope (toe-pay), these horse parades are organized like a picnic/parade/party, with music, dancing, food, beer tents and booths with stuff for sale.                                              

Horses from all parts of the country are trucked in for the big Topes like the one we saw today.  A lot of times the Topes are put on for a local charity.                                                                             

These events are also great opportunities to catch up and renew old friendships.  Take a look at some of the photos to get the flavor of the preparations that were being made for the Jacó Tope that took place today.

This is Teri walking Max down a deserted stretch of one of the many isolated black sand beaches of Hermosa (about 5 minutes from Jacó). 

The skies reveal the remnants of a refreshing tropical storm that come and go more often during this time of the year.  There exists multiple messages in this photograph. 

It speaks to people in different ways; a frozen microsecond of time.