Buzzards, higher

Three or more flying vultures is called a kettle
A group of vultures hanging out is a committee
Vultures feasting on remains together is called a wake.

When I was a kid, my family had a lake place near the ozarks.  It wasn't techinically the lake of the ozarks, it was off Turkey Creek.  My great-grandfather had built a house on a bluff that had shallow caves.  Just underneath the house next door was the biggest cave, we called it the bird cave.  I had heard about the cave for, it seemed, like a long time before I got to explore it.  I remember asking about going down and I don't know if my cousin didn't want to show me or my mom was freaked out about me walking down to it.  When I finally got to climb down the rusty metal stairs bolted to the cliff, the actual cave was a little lackluster.  It was neat, and i really did think so, but at that age, I had created a different image and the reality of it wasn't as spectacular as I imagined.  There was a bit of a cave inside the cave and there was bird shit everywhere.  There might of been some feathers, but nothing huge, so I don't have anything to show from it..I think there might have been some eggs, but I might be re-imagining that or maybe that was a different visit.  There were absolutely no birds in the cave.  Honestly, thank god.  Maybe that was the reason we didn't go down there much?  I only went in it a few times.  Maybe because it wasn't on our property or that the stair was getting too old, I don't remember.

One time we were driving around in a neighboring "resort" and we saw a committee of vultures on a bare tree in the near distance.  We got out to look and could hear them talking.  The scene was kinda unnerving and haunted.

Anyway the lake place is one of my happy places.  You would see turkey vultures up close flying along the bluff.  We called them buzzards.  It was really cool to see them that close.

Wolves, lower

for years, for fears

aligator gar

I thought a gar bit me once while I was climbing the ladder to our dock on Turkey Creek. I immediately reacted to the sudden sting and quickly jumped onto the wooden platform to check my leg. I was bleeding and freaked out. Later that day, my first cousin by marriage, Ray, found the gar, dead, twisted to the ladder by fishing wire, punctured by an angler's hook. I remember walking over the little bridge attached to our dock and seeing him throwing something towards the cove with a cave side of our swimming area whilst simultaneously receiving news of what really happened to me earlier in the day at the ladder. It disturbed me that Ray would throw the fish of projected evil right where we swam. We surmised that the hook cut me and not the gar, which was way smaller than the one in the above picture and probably not the aligator kind. For years, I would purposely float my legs upward avoiding the rung of the mossy ladder where I felt the pain of the hook.

The Stuff

Have you ever seen "The Stuff"? I can't say I highly recommend it and I can't say don't rent it. I can say that this is B-Horror movie Gold. It's the shittiest movie, but the palet of ridiculousness allows the viewer to engage and interact with this visual medium. I was young, my mother, two sisters and I were down at the lake. My family had a lake place thats ownership stretched back to my great grandfather, Leo. He divorced my great grandmother, Avis, and moved to Warsaw in a house on the bluffs of Turkey Creek. He stayed there, I think, until his death. Which coincidentally, came two days after my birth. I know he was aware that I was his first great granddaughter. My grandpa told me that Leo wished to have his ashes buried next to his house on the bluff. I always invisioned his urn as an old Mayonaise jar. His children granted that request, but then my grandpa and his brother decided to dig it up. He said they just didn't think it was right. It just occured to me that it probably had to do with their Christian beliefs. It also just occured to me that I don't know what they did with Leo's ashes. Hmmm. I guess I'll have to ask. Moving on, I have some interesting memories of that place. The time I foggily remember cutting my heel on glass that was in my crib, roaming around the old boy scout camp and getting riddled with seed ticks, going to "the point" and climbing around gigantic limestone slabs that created a fossilized superman's house, buzzing around on my cousin's dirt bike shouting out the name of a kid who was missing and later found drown down by a dock we saw him swimming by, swimming down at "the point" and having schools of shad hit my face and neck, walking down to the bird cave which was covered in bird shit and wasn't as cool as I dreamt it to be, jumping off our dock without my life jacket, realizing it mid-air and then sinking like a rock for the first time, and fearfully pushing off the slimy bog bottom to finally break the surface where the air never tasted so sweet. As time went on, Leo's house turned into a certified condemned building. A raccoon lived there. My father's generation were abuzz with ideas on renewing the home's shabby image. The architect, cousin Steve, was drawing up plans while his brother Gary rehabbed the bathroom. My cousin Kenny and I drew up our kid ideas for the lake place. And then my grandfather got upset and all the joy came to a halt. He cautioned his fear of in-fighting over the property and that his experience with his siblings proved it inevitable. Bitterness and grudge holding ensued and probably still does. Yes, there's a natural tendency for that in our breed. Years later, the property saw a renaissance and Leo's home was torn down and replaced by a double-wide trailer courtesy of Avis' sister Aunt Bess. This is where my mom, sisters and I first watched "The Stuff". After we arrived at our trailer by the lake and unpacked the car, we ventured off to Simpson's, a convenience/sundries store a little ways back on the MM highway. It's weird, the store was even painted the color of the Simpson's cartoon characters. I always wondered if they did it on purpose. In keeping up with the times, the tiny backroad grocery installed a video section. We happened to bring our portable TV/VHS player so we picked through their off-brand video collection. Of course, we couldn't pass up "The Stuff". There is one thing you should know, my sisters and I never shy from a cheesy B-Horror movie, be it, "The Granny," "The Paper Boy," "Dolly Dearest," or "Crawl Space." We got back to the trailer under ominous tornado scented skies. Fake wood weather radio in hand, my mother sat on the couch and watched us while we made fun of and laughed good hearty laughs at this campy vehicle. Our favorite line was after the stone-faced film noir wannabe detective and a curious youth escape from the young boy's home. It was too late, the boy's parents had eaten The Stuff, which I guess, expanded in their body cavity like caulk or sprayable insulation. The boy had to pretend to eat The Stuff to satisfy his parents/Stuff zombies. He tactfully tricks his parents/Stuff zombies into letting him eat The Stuff in the bathroom. After dumping The Stuff down the toilet, where it oozes around of its own accord, he ingeniously replaces it with shaving cream and comes out of the bathroom scooping heapfuls of it into his pie hole. Driving away from his house the boy gets sick in the back seat and proclaims wildly that he just ate shaving cream. The detective deadpans, "Well, everybody has to eat shaving cream once in a while." Really? One of life's little lessons, eh? It was a good night and even better because the skies cleared of tornadic clouds so my mom rested easy. She doesn't take too kindly to tornadoes especially since, according to my family, it's a scientific truth that trailers are tornado magnets. A few more years later, the trailer became derelict again and young Ozark toughs smashed out windows and littered the property with beer cans. My husband and I stayed there one time early in our relationship. I got to show him the cool limestone rock that jutted out of our property and seemed to suspend over Turkey Creek lake. We observed the bird's eye view from the bluff as magnificent winged turkey vultures glided so near. With the beer cans, broken windows and no one in the vicinity aware of our presence, we had a hard time going to sleep with visions of "Deliverance" hillbillies dancing in our heads. It was still a nice time, but it was the last time. My grandfather decided to sell it, no one in the family except the poor ones were interested. My family lake property, R.I.P.