As usual, my favorite newspaper made a big deal about the return of the buzzards to Hinckley earlier this month, an annual affair that comes with a community-wide celebration.
Reader Nancy Foye-Cox was chortling.
She and her husband, Raymond Cox, moved to Akron in 2000 from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She grew up in Miami and for a time worked on the 10th floor of the county courthouse there.
Foye-Cox says the women’s restroom offered an up-close and personal view of buzzards on a daily basis. And it wasn’t pretty.
“South Floridians have a very different view of the buzzards — more akin to how Northeast Ohioans view Canada geese, but worse.”
Our obligatory comparison of the Hinckley buzzards’ return to the return of the swallows to Capistrano (used in 19 stories since 1985) makes her gag.
She also wonders why we don’t say much about where the buzzards winter.
“No one seems to care where they go when they leave Ohio,” she says.
They go to Miami. And Miami hates them.
Foye-Cox, a retired victim advocate for the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office, sent me a couple of articles from Florida publications to prove her point.
In one, a man who was gazing up at the courthouse proclaimed, “They look like Freddy Krueger with wings.”
But aren’t as sociable.
A reporter for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel said the buzzards “poop, puke, raise a stink and tear up property just for kicks.”
Summering in Hinckley apparently causes them to grow lax with their table manners.
If Miamians would celebrate the arrival of autumn, which they do not, never have and never will, they would hold a community celebration — or maybe a mourning party — on Nov. 1, when many of the Hinckley turkey vultures touch down after their 1,000-mile flights.
The annual Hinckley-Miami itinerary was first posited a quarter-century ago by a professor from Miami-Dade Community College, according to one article. That story also quoted a Cleveland Metroparks official as saying there is “a high possibility” that Hinckley’s buzzards are the same ones wintering in Miami.
Lucky Miami.
“They’re well-equipped to handle their special diet,” wrote the Sun-Sentinel. “They vomit up pellets of unwanted bone and hair, and urinate on their legs to kill any bacteria from traipsing around in rotten carrion.
“Their bald heads allow them to burrow into carcasses without fear of germs infecting their features.”
Favorite meals: roadkill, trash and dead fish washed up on beaches.
Scientists don’t know why, but the ugly critters with the 6-foot wingspans also “love to tear into anything rubbery or vinyl. They can pick apart windshield wipers or rubber stripping on cars, or take talon or beak to patio or boat cushions.”
Not many boat cushions available in Hinckley in January.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.31.