Solitaire

I stepped through the mesh door and entered the turkey vulture's enclosure, settling down on the ground near the threshold between the outdoor and indoor portions of the long, narrow flight pen. I leaned my back against a wooden beam and stretched my legs out in front of me. The vulture flew over my head, from the back of the enclosure out to a sunny perch, spread her six-foot wings, and peered down at me, cocking her red naked head and focusing her stony stare. Slowly, so as not to startle her, I pulled a small paperback book out of the waistband of my jeans, opened it, and began to read aloud: "About ten years ago I took a job as a seasonal park ranger in a place called Arches National Monument near the little town of Moab in southeast Utah."

The vulture responded by twitching her head and expelling a deep red blob of vomit onto the grass beneath her perch. Turkey vultures use vomit as a means of defense; I ignored it and continued. "Why I went there no longer matters; what I found there is the subject of the book."

The vulture hissed softly, stomped her chicken-like foot, and readjusted her position on the perch. She clearly didn't like me sitting in her pen, making continuous sounds with my voice. But, unfortunately, this vulture would never be released to the wild; she had been shot near the shoulder, probably with a rifle. The bullet caused permanent damage to the joint, which meant she couldn't fly well enough to survive on her own. She would become an ambassador for her species, traveling to schools and scout camps, participating in environmental education programs. I hoped she would be less afraid if she were already accustomed to the sound of human voices. Most diurnal raptors—hawks, eagles, falcons—do not seem overly concerned about noises. They live in very visual worlds, relying on their excellent eyesight to find prey and evade danger. In general, our hawks are far more concerned about balloons, kites, and swinging baseball bats than they are about squealing children, barking dogs, or revving engines.

A turkey vulture, however, might be different. Most biologists believe that turkey vultures use both their senses of smell and of sight to locate carrion. Dead animals don't generally make noise, so these birds probably don't use hearing to find food. But turkey vultures do tend to roost together and feed together at carcasses; it made sense to me that they would communicate with each other. Of course, their communication would vary greatly from the way humans communicate. Turkey vultures lack a syrinx, the organ that allows most birds to sing, call, and mimic; therefore, turkey vultures can only hiss and grunt.

I had never heard this bird grunt, but she was able to vary her hisses. She had what I optimistically called her "hello hiss"; she lets loose this loud, drawn-out, letting-air-out-of-a-bicycle-tire hiss when I first approach her flight pen. It's reptilian and quite intimidating. I don't let it bother me, though, and I always enter the cage anyway, usually responding to the hiss with a "Hello, friend, nice to see you, too." When I get closer to her, the hisses change; they become shorter and less deep, perhaps because I don't give her much time to settle in on a perch before I approach her. Toward the end of our game—when she gives up or gets tired and finally "lets" me touch her wings and wind the jesses (leather leash straps) around her legs—she stomps her big right foot. This seems like a last-ditch effort to get me to leave her alone. It never works, of course. Sometimes it seems like she's actually trying to kick me. And she nips at my fingers, so I hide them under a glove while I jess her. The few times that she has actually bitten me it barely broke the skin, though I know that her sharp beak is capable of deftly dismembering small and...