Last Wednesday, the stakes got higher as my father flew into town. I stressed out for an entire week beforehand on what he would say when he saw me: "Honey, eating too much of that Puerto Rican food again!" or "Honey, you've got a little pimple!"

That morning, I pulled into the parking lot at work with all kinds of insecurities. "What will he say about my monotonous, non-creative day job?" and "What black clothes can I wear to mask these hips?" 

Then, it occurred to me that there was this huge black bird with a red head grazing on the grass in front of me. "What in the world is that?" I thought. "Does someone have a turkey farm here in Northern Jersey?" Only, this was a lawn in a commercial business park. I looked for some colorful peacock feathers, but didn't see any. This bird looked like a peaceful turkey, with a long red neck and head enjoying the sunshine and fresh morning dew. 

As soon as I got in my office, I Googled "wild birds of northern New Jersey," and an article came up about a turkey vulture that had crashed into a woman's windshield. The article expressed that not only was this incident strange, but sighting a vulture in this urban area was even stranger. Apparently, there is a mysterious colony of turkey vultures somewhere around the George Washington Bridge.

My mind immediately began to wander back to the Disney cartoons I've seen as a child where vultures are portrayed as foreshadowing, evil symbols of what a witch was about to do. I have also heard of many enlightening experiences where exotic birds have appeared to people and given them some spiritual message.

So, I Googled "the symbolic meaning of vulture sightings" and found a site that satisfied my "looking for a deeper meaning in life" curiosity. What I took from it was that someone will attract a vulture energy when they need to look beyond the physical realm in their life. A vulture symbolizing death is a cliché. They may eat the carcasses of dead animals, but they are cleaning up the environment. As a vital part of ecology, they are preparing the earth for the new life to come. In fact, seeing a vulture may mean that there will be new life in a relationship that may have been dead for many years.  

What I have taken away from this is that we have to look beyond our physical circumstances. Just because something looks bad and is an obstacle in our path, doesn't really mean that it is. All living things can be used as symbols of hope, peace, and laughter in the midst of some our denser days.

For more information on protecting the turkey vulture, please go to  http://vulturesociety.homestead.com/.

Marisol Tirelli Rivera