I'm into vultures now and Eugene Grasset

A vulture on board; bald, red, queer-shaped head, featherless red places here and there on his body, intense great black eyes set in featherless rims of inflamed flesh; dissipated look; a business-like style, a selfish, conscienceless, murderous aspect-the very look of a professional assassin, and yet a bird which does no murder.  What was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for so innocent a trade as his?  For this one isn’t the sort that wars upon the living, his diet is offal—and the more out of date it is the better he likes it.  Nature should give him a suit of rusty black; then he would be all right, for he would look like an undertaker and would harmonize with his business; whereas the way he is now he is horribly out of true.    ---Following the Equator, Mark Twain