Scavenging Dinosaurs At Each Other's Throats

Now, I'm going to tell you a story while drinking. First two sips, in.

I saw vultures on high plains of Florac (or up on the crest of one of the ranges of the valley it lies in). Now I didn't know we had vultures in Europa (note the mood: I'm playful – no more gloom).

So I'm on these plains and in the middle a silver pine plantation grows. A vast expanse, the plain. The sky is covered, so the too white sun for white men is not shining. It's August, the wind is light, warm and constant; it feels as if I've entered a porthole. These could be the high plains of New Mexico, or its whereabouts. For far, very far, the plains extend: not a soul in sight. Rolling valleys extending on the horizon, all around. A path veers in the general direction of the pines. The wind keeps my now too long hair aloft, caressing my neck.

I imagine Comanches appearing over a hill, yonder. I kill two, because my superior rifle and my skill as a shot, horse knowing I need it to ride perpendicular to the oncoming rush, crossing over to my right, enable me to. Then I ride (to a fort, bla bla) like the wind.

I'm in the pine grove. This could be Canada. Or Sweden. I've never been to Sweden.

And down the road I hear screeching. A ruckus, as one can imagine a herd of scavenging dinosaurs at each other's throats over a carcass would make: it's loud. I'm afraid – though it looks like it's coming from just around the bend, where farmland appears. I see large wings. Could someone be farming some ostrich-like giant turkeys, or something, going insane? Should I continue – the path cuts right through... The edge of the grove and its dark green outline prevent me from seeing but the screeching has reached murderous level.

Something flies or leaps over the path.

Vultures.

Amazing. I'd just seen a wildlife sign a few hours before informing that vultures indeed dwelled here. But here they were – Magnificent!

Overhead two soar (by now I was at the grove's edge and the ruckus had hovered a few tens of meters down the road). But two soar overhead. One flapping its impressive wingspan, away, the other making a sharp u-turn, fifteen feet overhead, gliding slowly over my exact position. A curious and fearless individual. I had seen this with penguins. Penguins don't make you freeze.

What am I going to do? Tuck, roll, in a flash right-left scramble upon impact? No need. It examined my position. Knowing I could not fly.

Demi two.

Someone once told me a guy with a good arm he knew used to fill his pockets with baseball-sized rocks when navigating through a pass. Cougars (the animal) would occasionally prowl over the ledges, and they could be insisting, fearless as well. So after three or four well-placed rockets the cat would back off, posing no danger to the navigator, and lady. I think. I pick up a baseball-sized rock. I feel silly. Vultures don't attack people. Or did I skip a page, or switch channels, when the exceptional case came up. I feel disrespectful. Fuck it. CYA, cover your ass. They're watching me, the ruckus is as loud as ever, insanity, one flies off. Another follows. I drop my rock, not needing to look like an idiot anymore – I step forward, they are not panicked but one by one they fly off. The chatter of the small birds in the pines I sadly cannot name dies down.

My walk is ongoing. Houses or farmhouses or some kind of more-expensive-than-cheap room-for-rent in a tightly knit hamlet break the spell: it's August, 2014. I need to get back. I've wandered again and the day is ending: the sun-location is hard to identify. But I just gave it a hard time: it doesn't owe me.

It's ten to, says the waiter who's asked me to sit at the right terrace. Ten to what? I ask him a little too directly for smaller town etiquette. Seven, he says – I smile.