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Golfing Buzzards
Not a lot of the big name golfers come to New Orleans for the HP Classic, formerly known as the Compaq Classic, which was formerly the Entergy Classic, or something. It's out at English Turn, a gated community w/ golf course east of Algiers, in Orleans Parish. I've started a job out there painting a newly constructed home in the Parks section. I don't know how they run off the buzzards for the big golf classic but they do, I feel sure of it. There are perhaps a hundred, or probably more, large buzzards that sun themselves on the roofs of half million and million dollar homes along a very particular stretch of English Turn Blvd., and just inside the Parks. I forget, if buzzards regurgitate or defecate their waste matter, but whichever it is, they leave long white streaks of it on the roofs of a handful of select two-story homes. I did not however see a single buzzard this morning. They are not always there in the Turn but I'm sure it's not a coincidence that has them missing for the golf classic. It is a little bit obscene the money surrounding large professional sporting events. I'm not sure why the big time golfers eschew the New Orleans classic except maybe most of them want to be in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area for the Byron Nelson Classic, which is like the week after, I think. And I don't know, maybe the prize money is lacking in New Orleans. This year's winner only walked away with 900,000 dollars. I am not so much a buzzard lover, and as a homeowner myself, I feel for those afflicted English Turners with multiple carrion eaters on their roofs. But also, it is with a sense of wonderment that I see this phenomenon from time to time, and invariably, it seems to make me smile just a little.