Culture Vulture

This is a short story I began writing but I didn't know how to finish it until a very dear friend told me I'd already finished. Thank you Karan Manveer Singh. You're the coolest. Bro! Rock on.

Carry on Carrion!

A Vulture sat with a bad taste in his mouth. He’d picked it up from a dead buffalo down at the slaughterhouse. The thought must have troubled the buffalo for quite a while for it to have permeated through to its liver. For it was the liver that the Vulture had feasted on for Brunch.

Buffalos are anyway given to long periods of contemplation. They’ll chance upon a newly grown thought and then chew on it for an eternity. That’s why they are considered the thinkers of the four-legged kingdom.

And since the languages of flyers differ from that of non-fliers, the Vulture was only able to make out that the thought was a bad one. And it was beginning to give him a stomach ache. He sauntered over to his best friend who was sitting on the top branch, eyeing the discarded eyes of a calf.

“What do you do about a bad taste in your mouth?” asked the first Vulture to his friend. “You neutralize it with a good one. Everybody knows that” replied his friend. “Serves you right for eating liver anyway.” You should leave it for the thick-skinned Pariah Kites. Us sensitive kinds must lay off the violent victuals. Didn’t your parents teach you that?”

“The guts of the cat
The udders of the cow
The spleen of the thing
That goes ‘Bow Bow’

The gizzard of the lizard
The camel’s hump
The nuts of the squirrel
These all shall you dump

The buffalo’s liver
Is a strict no no
As are the heart of a man
And a monkey’s toe.”

Don’t you remember?” said his friend launching into the famous violent-victuals lecture.

“We have been eaters of dead animals for millions of years, unlike the Kites who began just a few thousand years ago. We’ve developed very sensitive taste-buds. That is why the elders have listed down the things we should eat and those we shouldn’t. Junk thoughts can kill you. You must be more careful in future.”

“But we used to eat every part of the animals earlier” said the Vulture “We never cared about the carrion’s delicate parts.”

“Those were better times” said his friend. “The animals mostly died of natural causes. Not the violent deaths common today. It’s difficult to know how a body died nowadays. And by the time you find out, it’s often too late. Look at ‘Suicide Sam’. He flies at those iron birds every time they come screeching down. Just because he ate the heart of a human who jumped off a cliff. These are dangerous times. And if we want carry on eating carrion, we’ll have to learn to adapt.”

“But I’ve been nibbling the so-called violent victuals every once in a while” Said the Vulture. “It gives an interesting layer to lunch. I’d grown used to it. A dash of despair and a glob of greed goes down very well with a meal sometimes. It’s just this particular buffalo that seems to be troubling me. I can’t seem to put my beak on the emotion.”

“I’d stay away from them if I were you” said his friend before he launched his large ungainly frame down towards the eyes he had been eyeing.

But the Vulture could now feel the effects of the buffalo’s thoughts wearing off. And there came upon his person, the urge to feel that exotic thought again. It had begun with a tingling in his tongue and had run down his rather long neck until it had covered his entire body. The texture of the thought had been close to that of greed, without the taste of adipose. It also had the lingering flavour of longing without the bitter-sweet undercurrent of love.

Without a pause, he flew back to the slaughterhouse.