Discover Top Posts Tagged with #wild stories

You guyssss I've commissioned new art of my character and it'll be a few days until I can post it but it looks so good *feral noises

I've been waiting for ages to commission artwork of my characters and I finally went for it, so glad I did. The Wild Stories universe is looking great these days :)

#wild stories #writblr #it's giving storybook #wild would approve fr

Aidan RL Stories: The Turkey Vulture Nose Piercing.

The time I got my nose pierced by a vulture.

At one point in my life at worked at a raptor rehab center. No, that has nothing to do with Jurassic Park, but it did technically have dinosaurs, because it was for birds of prey. The main focus was on rehabilitating injured birds so they could be released back into the wild, but some birds were for various reasons un-releasable, and most of those were in big, nice enclosures where they’d live out their lives while getting regular tourist visits to raise funds to support the entire endeavor.

It’s a great cause, and if you like birds or wildlife in general and have a strong stomach, I highly recommend it. For me it was a commitment of six months, but only about 8 hours a week, which was more than reasonable, and I absolutely loved it. It was gross, but it was really fun, and I got a lifetime’s worth of crazy animal stories.

Because, as they said when I signed up, these are wild animals, and you will get clawed, bitten, shit on, thrown up on, and whatever else. That just comes with the territory.

I did not, however, expect to get my nose pierced.

The place I volunteered at had a turkey vulture enclosure with two birds in it. One was male and one female, but they weren’t a bonded pair. That was largely because the male had imprinted on humans. I don’t know his full story, but he thought he was human, or that humans were vultures, or however you want to put it. The female hadn’t imprinted on humans, she’d grown up properly, but had sustained a wing injury that meant she would never fly properly. She could flap up into the air, but couldn’t hold her wing out to soar, so she couldn’t survive in the wild.

Knowing she was a vulture, and that he was a vulture, she thought they should be a couple. But he wasn’t interested, he just wanted to flirt with human women. He’d gift them pebbles from his enclosure’s gravel, or try to untie their shoelaces, or whatever he thought might seem charming, he was completely incorrigible. She hated it.

He’d never flirted with me much, I just came in to clean and got out, but he did occasionally go for my shoelaces, and she knew it, even if I always gently shooed him away.

That day I wasn’t doing anything unusual, but there was a lot of gross leftover rabbit in their enclosure, which was my main task as a volunteer, cleaning up the bits the birds didn’t eat so that they wouldn’t rot and stink.

So I was in there with my slop bucket, bent over to grab up some unspeakable former-rabbit bits, when a sudden weight arrived on my back. The female vulture had landed on me.

Vultures, like some birds and many reptiles, assert dominance via perching or sitting, the most dominant individual being the one on top. I knew that, so I knew she was trying to show me who was boss. But yanno, I don’t take any guff from any bird, however large or impressive. And vultures have weak claws, so I wasn’t afraid she’d bloody me, like I might have been if an eagle or a hawk had landed on me. So, figuring this was the simplest option, I stood up, assuming she’d get dumped off of my back.

The vulture, however, was unexpectedly agile, and made an upward scramble as I stood, arriving unsteadily on my shoulder. The unsteadiness meant that she wanted to grab something to stabilize herself. Given she had no hands, though, her grabbing tool was her beak.

Which grabbed at me.

And got my nose.

I didn’t feel any pain. Partly adrenaline, I’m sure, but also partly that predatory bird beaks can be insanely sharp, and it went it too easily to really hurt. She was grabbing me by the nose, though, I definitely felt that.

I volunteered at the raptor center because I like animals, so I didn’t want to hurt her. I remember very gently wrapping one hand around her head, towards the neck, and carefully prying her beak open with the other hand. Then I held her out at arm’s length and let her drop to the gravel. She seemed shocked by this, and didn’t do much immediately, but I had to push her back with a broom as I exited the enclosure.

Then I was out, though, and she was in, seemingly unharmed, and it was all over.

I got bandaged up with a bird plaster, because for some ungodly reason the raptor rehab center only had bird medical gear and no human first aid kit. The bird doctor who patched me up seemed worried I’d quit over this, but I’d been told I’d probably get clawed, bitten, and whatever else when I signed up for this job, and I came back for my next shift just as usual.

The puncture happened to be precisely at the spot where one might put a nose stud, in that little dimple by the nostril, and went so close to all the way through it would have been trivial to put some jewelry in there and keep it. But I’ve always hated nose piercings. Not how they look, but how the idea feels, especially the idea of snot on the inside. Not sorry, I just can’t help but think about it and find it unpleasant.

So I let the tiny triangular hole heal up.

It did, nicely, there’s no visible scar.

But if you look very carefully, you can tell that my nose isn’t perfectly symmetrical, a tiny dimple from the vulture’s beak remains on one side.

And I have the best story to tell, about how my nose was pierced by a jealous vulture. Bet you can’t top that!

#raptors #birds of prey #volunteering #wild stories #vulture

#art #gayart #gay art #vintage art #vintage gayart #military #military men #gay stories #gay literature #wild stories #gay fantasy

"In our kind of work, "magic" is not a metaphor for gaining power, control, or authority, but for our numinous connection with natural world, and our nonhuman neighhbors. It is wild work. It is soul work. And we need wild stories right now, more than ever." -Terri Windling

Here's the link to the entire post, including a stunningly beautiful poem by Jane Yolen in the comments-- https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2020/09/wild-stories.html

#wild stories #connecting with the numinous #living in the liminal spaces #magic not for power #but for connection #that's what the heart of fantasy stories ought to be #terri windling