O Reason Not

What is the fat content of dreams? Calories in a carnal fantasy? Such flights hovered unbidden as the cowled monk sat in the scriptorium and the wooden bench wore a pair of tonsures on the crowns of his lean buttocks. Today he illuminates V for Voluptuary in his little book of Deadly Sins. Fat content of dreams. Calories in a carnal fantasy. Consider the Hooded Vulture, its bald pink head buried in the belly of a scavenged carcass, at one with its feast…

NOTES

1. Necrosyrtes monachus (Temminck, 1823) is the Linnaean binomen of the Hooded Vulture and means "a monk-like (bird) that drags away the dead.”
2. At a recent open-mic reading, a certain member of the audience graciously alerted the author to the fact that the Hooded Vulture’s soft beak cannot penetrate the tough muscle tissue of the abdominal wall of its prey and will often seek access to the bowels through the rectum.
3. The asshole.
4. Nor do vultures themselves lack all sense of humor when it comes to their feeding habits, or even a penchant for giddy wordplay, to wit:

So this Vulture is flying from New York to L.A.
The girl at the check-in counter affixes the proper LAX destination tags to the Vulture’s luggage.
What’s that, says the girl, pointing to the rotting chunk of gazelle hindquarters tucked underneath the Vulture’s wing.
Oh, that, says the Vulture. That’s carrion.

Art Information

• "Hooded Vulture" © Andrew Tinmouth; Creative Commons license.