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Ugliness — Carrion, Duty

2 min readMar 18, 2025

Daily Meditation 1,107–3/18/2025

We do not consider the vulture “bad” for all the gory works of his role

Anyone who has been reading these Daily Meditations for some time know that my wife and I love squirrels. I’ve written about “our” particular squirrels probably a dozen odd times over the last 3 years.

The unfortunate and sad side effect of “befriending” wild animals is that, well:

Sometimes they stop showing up. They find a mate and move on. They hibernate and don’t wake up. They migrate for the winter and don’t come back.
Or, worst of all, they get hit by a car in front of your home.

It’s the sad nature of nature. We live so “long” (not especially) but they do not tend to.

Well, one of our squirrels was recently turned into a pancake on the road. They got hit, and then run over a few more times, then baked in the sun into some kind of furry jerky.

Now, the “ugly” side of nature has moved in — crows and vultures.

We perceive them as ugly for the simple fact they are doing their God intended duties.

Imagine the world without vultures or crows or coyotes! There’d be carcasses alongside roads, bones strewn everywhere, and the carrion insects would be carrying far more contagion.

Not every good or necessary thing in this life…

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Lucas A. Davidson
Lucas A. Davidson

Written by Lucas A. Davidson

Daily philosophical meditations on Eudaimonia. These are distillations from the forthcoming book on the topic. Comments or jobs: lucas@multistatewide.com

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