In the Before Time
the animals lived in peace
among themselves.
The forest was their home.
But the Sun lived outside the forest
and threatened to turn the forest into desert,
to singe the trees and dry the ponds and rivers.

The Animal Council decided that one of them
must deliver the sun high into the sky,
to hang it there so that all would be safe.

Turtle was selected
because of the armor on her back
and her ability to march all day.
It would be a long trip to the apex of the sky.
In the days before the Two-Legs Turtle had a lovely voice,
one that nearly purred as she thanked the Animal Council
for the opportunity to serve the greater good.
She took the Sun on her back
and sprang immediately to carry it aloft.
But before she could get even a quarter of the way to the heavens
she shrugged off the sun.
Her back was burned deeply.
She fell, screaming all the way down from the sky
and landed hard on all four of her legs.
She tried to run to the river to cool her burns
but her legs were so damaged from the impact
she could barely crawl.
To this day the outside of the turtle’s back is black and melted,
Her legs are mere stumps with claws.
The only voice she has left is a hideous hiss.
The long midnight conversations
of her kind are lost forever.
The frogs pitied her loss of voice.
The fishes swam under her as she rested on a log in still-too-hot sunshine.

But all was not lost.
Opossum was blessed with a great bushy tail in those days.
Her tail was the envy of Fox
and boastful, chattering Squirrel.
She could wrap the sun in her tail
and finish carrying it to the top of the sky.
She embarked, in the dark, the Sun completely shrouded
in her tail. The stars were her only guide
as she set off to the Heavens.
But only half-way there,
the sun began to burn out of her tail and
to spill light and heat throughout the firmament.
Opossum tumbled back to earth,
falling around her burning tail, screaming
until her voice too was gone,
reduced to a vicious, hissing snarl.
Opossum’s tail is a pink, hairless, burned worm to this day.

The Animal Council did not know what to do.
Things were only a little better, but it was Spring.
In Summer, the temperatures would rise.
Surely the forest would not survive.

Of her own volition,
the most regal of all the birds,
the Turkey Vulture, set off to right the world.
Her long, powerful wings lifted her slowly skyward
to where the sun hung half-way between Earth and Sky.
Turkey Vulture was the most beautiful of all birds
in those days.
A great crown of a thousand colored feathers
adorned her head
and a ruff of the same wrapped her neck.
When she reached the sun
she placed her head against the burning orb
and pushed with powerful strokes of her long wings.
She carried the sun to its safest height.
Here the sun could warm the earth
and the waters but the great scar of desert
would grow no larger.

All Turkey Vultures since have lived with
bare scarred skin on their heads and necks
instead of their birthright of the glorious crown of feathers
she had been given by the Mother.
She too, no longer speaks.
An angry, snuffing hiss through her nostrils is the best she can muster.
She still flies with no effort
riding the sun’s thermals and
the uplifts it sets in motion.
She no longer associates with the other animals
or the Animal Council. Some say it is her lost pride.
But the forest abides.