The fun part is choosing who wins ‘most memorable spectacle’ at family gathering

I’m still pretty disappointed in the turkey vulture I found blocking the sidewalk with its breakfast a few weeks back.

Yanking off bites as it held the meal down with a set of long, gnarled talons, the bird looked about as disgusting as the desiccated pile of bones and fur it had found to eat.

You might point out that it was only doing what everyone expects of vultures. But those low expectations are why these birds — one of my favorite species to watch when they’re doing what they do best — are so unloved.

This one reminded me of the admonition that someone always ends up yelling at the person who embarrasses themselves the worst when my giant extended family gets together: Just because it’s what everyone expects of you, that doesn’t mean you have to do it.

At least not where everyone can see.

For people who know no limit to our love for family, my relatives and I spend a lot of time yelling at each other at our reunions. That’s because while we’re respectable, upstanding members of our communities out on our own, we go a little feral any time we gather away from outsiders’ eyes.

Seeing who makes the most memorable spectacle at a gathering is a big part of the fun.

I was the early front-runner during the most recent gathering, when I reached across a table of well-dressed women at a big pre-wedding party and dripped oily, red salsa onto one of my cousins.

Then my brother took the lead when we noticed that he’d let his hair get so long and ugly that we were bound by family honor to make one of our aunts give him a decent haircut right in the middle of the party.

This particular gathering was one of the biggest we’d had in years, with several dozen of us moving over a long weekend from a backyard barbecue to a hilltop wedding to a long, loud campout at a family ranch. So the competition to be the person who we’d all be laughing about until the next reunion was fierce.

The winner was clear on the final morning, when we emerged from trailers and tents for breakfast and found one cousin calling her boss to say she was probably going to need the day off. She was expected at her office some 300 miles away in a few hours and would have been in fine shape to make the drive, but her keys appeared to be hopelessly missing.

All of us, her included, had a great morning making fun of her before she ended up finding a ride home. She texted a few hours later to say that she’d even managed to get to work on time.

Her recovery really wasn’t surprising. Once she left us, after all, she was back in her own world, where, as far as anyone knows, she really is the respectable, upstanding businesswoman that she shows herself to be. Only those of us who really love her needed to see her in the mess she gotten into.

And that’s my problem with that vulture.

There’s nothing in the sky more relaxing to watch than a vulture in flight, a clean, dark silhouette against a bright background that surfs the breeze in big, languid circles. But that’s a hard image to bring to mind when you come across one tearing off strips of carrion.

Or maybe I can take inspiration from a vulture spotted in the middle of a meal. If even so graceless a creature becomes glorious when it gets into the right environment, there’s hope for us all.

Richard Espinoza is a former editor of the Johnson County Neighborhood News. You can reach him at respinozakc@yahoo.com. And follow him on Twitter at @respinozakc.