‘Tis the season for hanging out with weird relatives. I received my first injection of strange relative juice last week with Thanksgiving and expect to receive a number of other doses between now and New Year’s.
I’m sure that your family, like mine, has some truly strange members who come out of hiding at this time of year. My great uncle Bill is a fine example. This 70-year old man is, well, gross.
Let me just say that I’ve only been at one Thanksgiving meal during which someone welcomed the turkey with a loud fart – yes, Bill was at the table and he had a sly grin on his face.
Bill reminds me of a local wild animal that most people don’t realize lives here – the turkey vulture.
If you see one or more black specks of birds circling high in the sky around here during the summer, they are probably turkey vultures. Their main food source is carrion, meaning animals or fish that are already dead.
Turkey vultures find their meals through their sense of smell, which is highly unusual because most birds’ sense of smell is absent or minimal. It is believed that turkey vultures can smell rotting meat up to 12 miles away.
Possibly the most unusual trait of turkey vultures is their primary defense mechanism – vomiting on you. This is where I find myself thinking of Bill again. I’ve never seen the man vomit, but when my mom once took him to task for encouraging a cousin to eat dog food, I could see that he wished he could vomit on her.
Turkey vulture vomit is surprisingly bad smelling and if you get it on your face or eyes, it will sting. Vultures also defecate on their own legs to help cool themselves down when hot.
West Sound Wildlife received its first turkey vulture patient this year. He’s a juvenile whose wing was badly broken.
He was found by a big-hearted hunter who brought him to us for care. Indeed, he has tried to vomit on us – many times.
Another relative I’m looking forward to seeing next month is my aunt Martha.
She’s probably not as ancient as she appears, having led a hard life of drinking and smoking.
But she seems like a relic of an older time, which reminds me of the mountain beaver.
Mountain beavers are not related to the American beaver, which is the beaver that makes dams and cuts down trees. Rather, mountain beavers are the largest rodent in the Puget Sound.
They are fascinating animals that live in large burrows and tunnel systems, are brown in color, ferocious vegetarians and are 12- to 20-inches long.
Most noteworthy, they are the oldest and most primitive rodent on the planet and live only in the wet temperate coasts of the Pacific Northwest. In fact, mountain beavers have been living here for 50 million years.
When I see mountain beavers described as “living fossils,” it brings to mind a number of my relatives. But I think of Martha in particular because of another strange mountain beaver trait – they have to drink one-third or more of their bodyweight each day. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Martha without a drink in her hand.
West Sound Wildlife receives a handful of mountain beaver patients most years. One of our mountain beaver patients this year was attacked by a dog, which is not unusual. Luckily for her, she was able to make a full recovery.
Oh, did I mention that mountain beavers are the sole target of the largest flea known to modern science? The females of this flea can be one-third of an inch in length. Now that is disturbing. I’ll appreciate the rest of my holiday interactions with strange relatives a little more after having written this column.
The relatives, including Bill and Martha, will be just as weird as before, but I’ll enjoy thinking about Bill vomiting up half-digested meat and Martha digging a burrow. I’ll try to avoid thinking about what types of fleas Martha is carrying.
Kol Medina is executive director of the West Sound Wildlife Shelter on Bainbridge Island.
