I know you are speaking metaphorically but my wife has this weird, almost pathological, hatred of turkey buzzards, which are very common where we live.
Turkey buzzards are a federally protected species. A few years ago, my brother hit one while piloting my father’s private plane. The result was thousands of dollars in aircraft metalwork repairs and some complicated federal paperwork to clear a potential protected species violation. Not even a feather of that damn buzzard could be retained.
“I know you are speaking metaphorically but my wife has this weird, almost pathological, hatred of turkey buzzards, which are very common where we live.”
We live in a semi-rural area. About two weeks ago, one of the State Highway crews tossed a dead deer into the woods across the road from our property. Soon after, we had about a dozen black vultures show up, sit in the trees surrounding us. In between taking turns on the deer, they were eyeballing our female Shetland sheepdog who was in the yard. I got her out of there ASAP. It was pretty creepy and freaked my wife out. We see several varieties of birds of prey all the time, but had never seen black vultures before. They hung around for 3 days then moved on.