The Lead That Weighs Us Down

By Audrey Stallsmith

The vulture definitely was sick. Although I had heard my dad and brother discussing the somewhat erratic behavior of that small buzzard who had been hanging around our fields for a couple days, I was too preoccupied with other matters at the time to pay much attention.

Then I returned from a Wednesday afternoon in town, needing to get all the groceries put away before time to leave for prayer meeting, only to hear that the vulture now was lying out back of the barn. My brother had tried to chase it away, fearing that it would pass whatever disease it had on to our barnyard poultry, but the bird refused to move. 

When I went down to look at it, only its blinking eyes showed that it still was living. I discovered that vultures have pleasing plumage, even if their faces aren’t pretty.  And I’m so accustomed to guinea fowl that I tend to find ugly cute—and appealing.    

But I had learned from my recent experience in caring for a sick hen that doing so can turn the bird into a pet. And I knew that there were laws against unqualified persons keeping raptors or not-quite-raptors such as vultures for more than 24 hours. Not to mention that feeding one would be considerably more complicated than feeding a chicken! 

So, recalling a wildlife rehabilitation center whose director I had interviewed years earlier when I was writing Roses for Regret, I gave them a call. The man I talked to agreed that they would take the bird, provided that I brought it to them before 8:00 PM that evening and dropped it off in their admissions shed. He also assured me that vultures don’t get rabies.

Actually, I hadn’t been worried about rabies, but about getting bird doo doo on my “good” clothes—or possibly blood if the bird should decide to peck me. I was so tired that I really didn’t want to have to change those clothes before prayer meeting. When I am worn out, my mind tends to become fixated on a schedule which may not be as necessary as I think it is. In this case, I convinced myself I absolutely had to accompany my elderly father to that service as usual, which wouldn’t leave me time to take the bird to the wildlife center myself. 

Fortunately my younger sister and her new husband turned up on their side-by-side about then to feed her sheep, so I pounced on the opportunity to pass the buck—er, buzzard—to someone else. I figured that my sister’s purple-haired and good-with-animals daughter, who happened to be visiting her mother at the time, wouldn’t be the type to judge a bird by its appearance.

My sister didn’t seem any more enthusiastic than I was about making the 30-mile drive to the wildlife center that evening. So I promised that, if my niece would care for the patient overnight, I would do the transporting in the morning. About the time he was taking a vulture home in a box, my brother-in-law probably was beginning to wonder about what kind of family he had married into. 

No, this isn’t one of those inspiring pieces where the bird overcomes all difficulties to fly free in the end. My niece actually did convince it to consume some meat and water, and it was strong enough to raise its head and look up at me when I said goodbye to it at the center. But the people there later reported to me that it didn’t survive.

They weren’t sure what had caused the vulture’s state of starvation, since it wasn’t showing any fractures, but toxins were one possible cause. I’d already read on the center’s site that eagles and vultures frequently suffer from poisoning because they consume animals which have been shot by hunters and still contain fragments of lead.

In other words, it is the accumulation of little things that gets them physically, much as it gets the rest of us spiritually. Just now, the necessity for taking so many safety precautions can be irritating. Some people are beginning to erupt from pent-up frustration and worry. Meanwhile, less aggressive types like me keep doggedly demanding a return to their usual schedules even if the heavens—or the birds in them!—fall.   

Before I blame a lack of oxygen caused by my mask for the tiredness I felt on that particular Wednesday, though, I should remember that shopping always has made an indecisive type like me exhausted simply because it is a succession of decisions. And I should be grateful that I still have so many choices rather than letting them wear me out.

The truth is that we, like the Israelites on their way to Canaan, complain too much and praise too seldom. As with the vulture, we let our spirits get poisoned by the little things. For instance, when God is miraculously raining down manna every morning, does it make sense to complain about it being the same kind of manna all the time? Granted, it might be a bit much to eat it for forty years, but whose fault was those forty years?

In the many centuries since, we’ve continued to pluck fruits of many kinds off of trees and plants or lug already picked ones home from the store. God keeps on making all kinds of manna for us. Slower manna, granted. Sometimes manna marred by too much water or too little. But still manna. Still a miracle. 

My own endless fascination with plants is partly based on the fact that they are so unbelievable. How possible does it seem to get a living green thing from a dry brown seed?  Not very. Or for that green thing to expand on its own and make succulent fruits? Even less likely. Still it happens over and over. 

Our taking that for granted reminds me of a line from G. K. Chesterton’s “Medievalism.” Although he was writing about other things, when we harp bitterly on what is owed us instead of rejoicing in the abundance constantly showered down on us, we, too, have “shattered the [stained] glass in its glory and loaded ourselves with the lead.”

The vulture reminded me that I take the animals constantly around me too much for granted also until an unexpected close encounter awes me again. Not to mention the people around me, who are equally unique—and equally amazing. 

When I said goodbye to the bird, alone with him in the admissions shed because of Covid, I told him that he would be okay. Not that he would survive, because I couldn’t guarantee that. But, as Luke 12:6 assures us, God’s eye is on the sparrow as well as on His children, and a vulture is much easier to see! In that case, whatever happened to either of us was going to be okay.