Comments on: All Hail the Scavengers!

By: Riverwolf

Riverwolf — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:25:31 +0000

Great post–and funny, too. Thanks for taking a swing at the sacred cows. I need to do a little scavenging myself right now, and you’re right about the cultural disdain for it. But how smart and resourceful and prepared we’d all be if we did this more often.

By: Cosette

Cosette — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:05:48 +0000

Great post! I love vultures and they are a common part of of the urban landscape here in Miami. They’re seen circling the court house building downtown almost everyday (deliciously ironic and totally true). In Santeria, the vulture is a symbol of Oshun, the beautiful river goddess that is love and sexuality. There’s a myth about how she started as a peacock, but turned into a vulture as she was burned traveling upwards to the sun where Olodumare lives.

By: Pitch313

Pitch313 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:06:54 +0000

Well, it’s not especially a joke that scavenging birds do go for soft, accesible bits like eyeballs early on as they work over corpses. To look upon a raven plucking out and devouring an eyeball can–as it did with me–go a long way in creating a totemic linkage.

Plus, I’d have to suggest that as we practitioners establish linkages with certain dieties or guardians or entities, we do come to a better grasp of the scavenger’s part in things.

But I’ll grant you that I’ve seen much more of animal scavengers on TV than I have in my local little patch of ground.

FWIW, one of my Craft names is–Rusty BuzzardSkunk!!!

By: Meirya

Meirya — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:24:20 +0000

Yay! I adore scavengers of all sorts and identify strongly with the scavenger aspect of Hawk. And then of course there’s Grackle… who is savage vicious glinting scavenging.

(I idly looked up “Grackle as totem” writings recently. There was a Ted Andrews one that didn’t once touch on the scavenging, or the ruthlessness, how grackles will rob nests or just kill nestlings of other birds and then not even eat the nestlings half the time. The Andrews description was all “iridescent feathers!” and “harsh voices” and “family/friends/flock” and… blech.)

(I need to write on Grackle as I experience him.)

*/babble*

Well written as always, Lupa.

By: Kate Winter

Kate Winter — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:53:23 +0000

This is a great post! I totally agree about Raven (and found the vulture comic funny as well).

I was thinking about some of this yesterday while foraging local blackberries. There are TONS of blackberries growing everywhere around here, right in the middle of the city. There are also plenty of people who are homeless or even just strapped for cash or going a little bit hungry… and yet the bushes were teeming with berries everywhere I looked, not having been picked over at all. In the fall, streets are littered with rotting apples that fall from trees, never having been picked or used. Such a waste. Why aren’t we at least using what is there for free, especially in these times of economic hardship? Makes no sense to me.

Likewise, while I’m happy to see the advent of things like Craigslist and Freecycle, it still amazes me how many people *don’t* use them, or even their local thrift stores. If we all recycled our still-good-but-no-longer-wanted items in this way, there would be so much less need for consumption of new materials.

By: Emma-Jayne Saanen

Emma-Jayne Saanen — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:46:44 +0000

Scavengers are so important to the life-death cycle, it disheartens me when I see them “romanticised”. Feral Pigeon, Brown Bear and Herring Gull, three of my most recent totem experiences, are all scavengers and I think what they do is beautiful and powerful.

By: Willow

Willow — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:01:16 +0000

Thank you for this! As one with Coyote in her totem, and who grew up in the Mojave Desert, it always amazes me how many claim kinship to coyotes and yet ignore the fact that they’re are scavengers.

I think its too easy to ignore what most don’t face when they live within cities, or separated in some way or another from the physical representation of their totem. If you haven’t seen a coyote, thin and starving, on the side of the road eating that jack rabbit that wasn’t fast enough its easy enough to ignore the reality of it.

By: Ravenari / Moonvoice

Ravenari / Moonvoice — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:28:29 +0000

I heart ravens, when they’re pulling up entrails, when they’re eating the beetles eating the remains while eating the remains, when they’re preening feathers or just flying in the sky.

This post is awesome.