If a Vulture Could Speak

If a vulture could speak, it would tell you it keeps you alive. I circle thermals and read chemical clouds; I taste death and render it harmless. Bald head, acid stomach, and a willingness to do the work you refuse—this is not drama, it is service. I speak in wind and carrion and the small, exact mechanics of sanitation that stop anthrax, rabies, botulism from walking a road you use. Listen close: what you call ugliness, I call efficiency.

This book is a close, sensory monologue that strips away superstition and shows how scavengers think, move, and cooperate—how a bird’s biology becomes a public health system. Part field guide, part philosophy of mind, part urgent conservation argument, it asks one practical question: what happens when you chase away the cleaners? Read to understand a creature you think you fear, and leave with a clearer sense of what honesty about death does for the living.