Zopilote

Traveling west across the Yucatan Peninsula in a rented Jeep with the top off.  This car had TOURIST written on it in big red letters.    It might have said AVIS but it is essentially the same thing.   We chose to take the Cuota or toll road because of the lack of decisions and fewer obstacles.   We were frequently amazed at the appearance of a person pedaling a three wheeled vehicle (two wheels in front) along the shoulder seemingly in the total middle of nowhere.  I have since looked at maps and Google Earth and there is nothing there. 

 So here we were heading across the scrubby 20 foot tall forest at about 120.   In American that's about 72.   We had the road pretty much to ourselves.  In the distance ahead we could see moving objects in the curb lane.   Whatever it was seemed to be hopping back and forth across that half of the highway.  As we approached the scene it became evident that the animals directly in our path were birds.   Big birds.   They were having a feast on some kind of road kill.   

P was looking off into the distance at this vulture buffet as I moved over to the passing lane to avoid the mess.  We were still about a half mile away when one of these primitive bastards decided to take flight.   The biggest one hopped a few times toward us, flapped his 6 foot wingspan once, twice and began veering into our lane.   The other creatures had stopped eating to watch their giant friend take off. WHAM.   We clobbered him.  He rolled across the windshield and blew up and over the jeep.  She ducked, I already had my head down by the steering wheel.  We were both trying to avoid the red shower of blood and guts.  The whooshing sound of feathers blowing the wrong way and screeching claws like chalk on a slate assaulted our ears as the bird tumbled by only inches over our heads.  She turned to watch the carnage on the road behind us while I looked in the mirrors.   The other birds wasted no time splitting into two groups.   They were feeding on our boy before he even stopped rolling.   

One wiper was a little bent.  That's it, one bent wiper arm.  One recycled vulture.  We were not covered by the half digested offal upon which they had been feeding or the resulting excrement which should have been exponentially worse than any seagull guano.   No mist of ultra fine blood particles resultant from our high speed collision on our clothes, up our noses, on our teeth and RayBan sunglasses.  Easy Peasy. All done.  A clean get away.  Just keep going, pressing on across the flat limestone based gnarled jungle towards the site of the meteor impact that instantly assassinated all the dominant species on the planet millions of years ago and toward a big, frozen drink with fresh fruit and a cherry enjoyed under the thatched roof of a Mexican beach bar.