Univited Overnight Guest~

Friday evening I had gone a couple of miles away to have some play time with my soon to be two year old grandsons, when my husby rang me up. It seemed that across the lane there was a Turkey Vulture on the ground and it was either looking forward to the old apricot striped cat that was sitting 15 feet from it to kick the bucket, or the old apricot striped cat was waiting for the Turkey Vulture to kick the bucket, for neither had moved for some time, they were just staring at each other. I drove back home and sure enough, they were both still looking at one another and as I approached, the cat ran under some nearby bushes and the Vulture just stared at me. I got a little bit closer and it flew about 5 to 6 ' off the ground and then splattered into a bush. It repeated this several times as I kept getting closer. The old apricot striped cat seemed to have some energy after all as well, for every time the bird with a 60" wingspan would lift off the ground, the cat would leap up in the air and try to catch it...
I was not prepared to lift a stinky Turkey Vulture and had no gloves, nothing, just had to do what I had to do to help a creature, if I could. I used to rehab and release Opossums, and I thought they had stunk... oh my this bird was rank. I could not locate a box large enough for it, so I placed it in a large bird cage. We tried reaching the gentleman with Wingspan, but no answer.  He later called and said that he was going to come by the next day to retrieve it and examine it. He told me not to feed it and explained that it might vomit and that if it did, it would smell really terrible.
We live in a three story house and the Vulture was in a cage on the third floor. I had finished loading the dishwasher and was going to take one last look-see of the guest before retiring to bed. From the first floor, I smelled the worst smell I have even smelled in this house. Once I had made it to the third floor, the smell was enough to gag me. Yep, the Vulture had thrown up and Chuck was ever so right, it was really terrible!!! I was able to get the mess cleaned up while the guest hissed and gave off these low warning guttural sounds and I simply worked around it.
Chuck arrived on Saturday and got a good laugh when he saw the cage that the Vulture had spent the night in and then took it to his place to examine it. Chuck found nothing wrong with the bird and thought that maybe it had been struck by a car and just stunned it a bit. He placed the bird on the ground and it began to take off and seemed not to be able to. Chuck said that he took a couple of steps toward the bird and off it flew and as he rang me up with the good news, the birds was just about out of his sight, and seemed over whatever had taken place the night before~