Lo! I watch high above and far in the distance as the Vultures float above Sugar Loaf — three, wings spread in an updraft. Half an hour and I see two more join the ariel play and now seven.
They rise gently and sweep swiftly downward, only to ascend to height once more. Play for these ungainly creatures, a joy, happiness only they can know.
None have once beaten a wing to the air, instead enjoying the heated thermals, as behind them, and even further in the distance, billowing white thunderheads build. I take note of these ominous clouds, but I return my eyes to the redheaded flock, and I find them no longer present.
It is then that I know what is to come. No sooner does the thought process than a flash illuminates my shadow, and a peal of thunder races multiplicity, echoing from behind where I stand. I turn and look up, find where the cell lives, high atop Sun Mountain, with its abandoned tailings and shallow, open pits.
Saint Elmo dances a jig between the high tension wires and the rooftop of the building across from me on F Street. Fascinating and frightening all at once.
No sooner do I step in under the porch covering the Hale-Norcross miner’s hovel is an odd Washoe Zephyr shooting its way from the north towards the south, pushing before its chilled breath a warm rain that pounds the corrugated tin foot overhead. Three, four, five roars of thunder, as many bolts of lightning, the storm races on from Virginia City to the south and the east, taking with it the wind, the rain, and the danger.
The skies above are clear again, but the Vultures fail to return. I am awed by these carrion-eaters instincts.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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