Sunday Morning Sex

(This post is safe for work and a #FarmLife posting; however, it has a literary connection—so read on!)

Sunday Morning Sex (this is not-NSFW)

I thought I’d seen it all here on TandM Farms: snapping turtles, fox pups, deer, turkeys, black vultures, squirrels, mice, large brown bats (three dozen of those!), Canada geese, A BLACK BEAR, green and gray herons, great horned and barred and barn owls, red-shouldered and Cooper’s/sharp-shinned hawks, coyotes, snakes (black, garter, hognose, worm, DeKay’s brown, copperhead, ring-necked), haunting nighttime calls (fox, coyote, mockingbirds, and all of the nightjars—whip-poor-will, chuck-will’s-widow, and the common nighthawk), a large tree fall (still doesn’t answer that age-old question), bee swarms, termite swarms! The birth of a lamb and a honey bee (many times over), a lamb dying in my arms, slime mold, chicken of the woods (which we ate)… so many things. I know I am missing some Really Cool Thing™ that is, for the moment, escaping my memory. But today’s experience ranks right up there.

Today, I witnessed two black vultures having sex!!!

Now, how many people can say they have seen that? It’s the rarity of the event that got me. We’ve all seen songbirds go at it, and of course, livestock and chickens and ducks and things. But two vultures?

I even saw Mr. V’s penis!!!

Now, how many people can say they have seen that! Okay, here’s the blow-by-blow (it’s short):

I was on the side porch (we have three) repairing our Little Free Library (more on that in a minute) when I heard a squirrel chuffing. You have all heard squirrels barking (BARK-WHINE, BARK-WHINE), chittering back and forth, or chuffing (CHUFF-CHUFF-CHUFF-CHUFF), even if you didn’t realize what you heard were squirrels.

So, I heard this squirrel-chuffing above me in the oak tree, twenty feet or so away. I looked up and saw a flurry of movement and thought, "Oh! Not a squirrel just chuffing, but a hawk caught a squirrel and the squirrel was fighting for its life!"

Then I saw the wrestlers part and fly away. Both of them! Vultures! Black vultures. And what did I just see briefly dangling? A penis!!! (Actually, a cloaca. I have seen many a duck penis in the past, and so it was immediately obvious to me.) Wow. I was dumbfounded. The reason words like "dumbfounded" and "gobsmacked" were coined was for moments like these.

Wow. I just couldn’t believe it. Made my day.

Quick facts about black vultures

I find them very sweet. Black vultures …

• are monogamous
• hang out in multigenerational family units
• have rebounded from all those years of DDT which decimated their numbers and are now very common
• are more numerous here in North Carolina than turkey vultures, but we have both (I have yet to see a turkey vulture on the farm)
• eat carrion, but their noses are not as refined as the turkey vulture nose, and so they will often follow turkey vultures looking for food
• nest in caves, hollow trees, stumps, and brush piles; they don’t really make a nest.

Literary connection: Some time ago, I had written most of a short story about a vulture on my farm and how it connected to our family. I could not get it to work, and so, for now, it has been shelved. Maybe I should dig it up again and give it another go.

Little Free Library update

Or: Why was Todd repairing our Little Free Library?

My shoulder is still in a "can’t do much with my right arm" state. But our Little Free Library needed to be repaired. The roof had rotted away and was falling apart. Plus, some of the boards that formed the back of it were gapping along the edges and big black ants just loved to raise their young behind the books. No one wants ants in their books. (Or anything, really, for that matter.)

Monica removed the books a few weeks ago, just in case the box deteriorated substantially. And then just the other day, she helped take it down completely so that I could start work on it (slowly, carefully). It took me a bit of time.

First, I removed the backing and added a seal to go between the backing and box. I used a bicycle inner-tube for this and it worked perfectly. It acts like a rubber gasket. Hopefully, this means no more ants!

I replaced the roof with an old migratory beehive top (it’s the style of Langstroth hive top that we prefer). Note: the LFL is built using an old ten-frame deep hive body (Google it). Adding the roof wasn’t overly complicated, but I had to adapt it to the swinging door by adding shims and cutting away some of the overhang.

Finally, I added two vents beneath the lip of the top. I had these spare vent disks from when I added vents to the cabinetry surrounding our refrigerator. The only problem: the vent holes would just invite critters to move in. And so, I used screening material held in place with #8 hardware cloth to prevent that. Pretty cool. I felt handy.

Little Free Library put back together, I got Monica to help remount it on the fence post and then reloaded it with books (1/2 for younger folks, and 1/2 for adults).

Books and vulture sex. What more could you ask for on a spectacular Sunday morning?