At Eugene's Cascade Raptor Center people can see birds of prey up close. It's also a hospital for rescued wild birds to recuperate and then be returned to the wild.
Saturday the center is celebrating International Vulture Day. KLCC's Rachael McDonald spoke with Executive Director Louise Schimmel. She says vultures, with their bald red head and black feathers, often get a bad rap, but they're important to the ecosystem.
The Vulture
by Robinson Jeffers
I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit
narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-
feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, 'My dear bird, we are wasting time
here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you.' But how
beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the
sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
and
become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life
after death.
