Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," celebrating the fabulous Egyptian deities and their respect for Vulture since 2005! All hail the sacred Thunderbird, the Peace Eagle, the Golden Purifier, bird without end, Amen!

We are entering Buzzard Week, the annual peak of Vulture Worship in New Jersey. The East Coast Vulture Festival is Saturday, March 5, in lovely Wenonah, New Jersey. Look alive if you come, because 200 vultures can't be fooled.

Awhile back I wrote a post about Staunton, Virginia, which has a similar influx of winter buzzards. The people of Staunton are not happy about their town being a Holy Land for the Golden Purifier.

Some time last week, I guess a citizen of that ill-informed hamlet read my post. In true troll fashion (which I don't mind at all, unless it's aimed at someone else in my comments section), this sorry apostate wrote the following:

"Until you have lived with a flock of 30+ Buzzards roosting in YOUR yard and vomiting in YOUR yard, you really can't know how disgusting these vile creatures are and you can't say just what you would consider doing to get rid of them. If you would like to have that first hand experience you can camp out in our backyard under the pine trees and get up close and personal with mother nature's garbage disposals. Just make sure you are wearing a hazmat suit because you will need it!"

Oh, my my my. Bound to share Prometheus's hill, I would say. Anon, you won't be burnt at the stake by this civilized Pagan, but you are WRONG WRONG WRONG on every front.

1. I do not have the good fortune of living with a buzzard roost in my back yard. However, I make frequent trips to Wenonah, where the residents don't mind seeing me in their yards under their trees.

2. I have never seen or smelt buzzard vomit in Wenonah. Buzzards don't barf unless they are stressed. That's food they need to survive! Maybe if you quit shooting paintballs at them, they'd keep their supper in their crops.

3. On said trips to Wenonah, I have smelled a distinctly musty odor, but nothing that would be offensive. Vultures are also very quiet. All you hear is a rustle of wings. Their poop doesn't smell. My car has been bombed with it. I don't even wash it off. I just let the rain take care of it.

4. The concentration of vultures in winter roosts is a seasonal phenomenon. In the spring they take off and go their merry way, out into the (vanishing) wilderness and the (overflowing) landfills.

So, Anonymous (oh I love trolls!), I put it to your heretic self this way: Vultures for a few months, not vomiting if you leave them alone, or these horrific, noisy, poop-strewing, shouldn't-even-be-here Canadian geese? It's been nonstop honking here today, and sadly, they ain't flying north.