Vultures in Idiots: From Fear to Acceptance

Introduction

In Laura Clery’s memoir Idiots (2022), the appearance of vultures during a canyon walk serves as a concrete symbol that dramatizes the book’s central emotional arc: the conscious choice to move from fear to love. Unlike purely metaphorical birds, these vultures are literal scavengers that Laura encounters in a moment of intense anxiety. Their recurrence in a single pivotal chapter—and their transformation from a perceived threat into a source of peace—mirrors Laura’s ongoing practice of reframing fear, a practice she credits with sustaining her sobriety, her parenting, and her creative work. This symbol is not isolated; it connects directly to the themes of addiction recovery, neurodiversity acceptance, and the vulnerability that underpins Laura’s public persona.

What Are the Vultures Literally?

Vultures are large, carrion-eating birds that circle high in the sky, using thermal currents to scan for dead animals. In the wild, they pose no threat to living humans. Laura describes them as “giant, shaggy brown birds” with “beautifully broad wings,” noting their “circular choreography” and how they fly “effortlessly” while barely flapping (Chapter 10). Their literal behavior—scavenging the dead—immediately triggers Laura’s primal fear of death and predation. However, the narrative later reveals that her fear was irrational: “Since when have you ever heard of a human being… getting attacked by a gang of vultures?” she asks. The birds themselves never change; only Laura’s perception of them does.

Where the Vultures Appear

The vultures appear in Chapter 10: The Neurodivergent Bunch , during a morning walk that Laura uses to manage her daily anxiety. She describes her ritual: “walk[ing] up to that ravine pretty much daily because it helps me to feel slightly less loco” and “combat[ing] the immediate and mostly unwarranted panic I often wake up in.” On the first day, she sees one vulture, then six more join it, and she immediately interprets them as a murder plot: “I thought for sure they were plotting to swoop down and peck me to death!” She flees in “flight mode.” The next day, she returns and sees the same vultures circling again. This time, she chooses a different response: instead of running, she “took a deep breath” and “chose in that moment to admire them and to be still in their presence.” She then addresses them aloud, mixing humor and vulnerability: “these dark circles under my eyes are from lack of sleep but I’m very much still alive!” The encounter ends with Laura’s eyes welling up at their beauty and feeling “connected.” The vultures appear only in this chapter, but their resonance extends throughout the book.

How the Meaning Shifts

The vultures’ meaning moves through three distinct phases:

• Phase 1 – Pure Fear: Laura initially projects her own anxiety onto the vultures. Her interpretation is self‑centered and catastrophic: “I thought for sure they were plotting to swoop down and peck me to death!” This reaction mirrors the irrational, fear‑based thinking that Laura describes elsewhere in Idiots—for example, the paranoid pizza‑delivery incident in Chapter 2, where she mistakes a delivery person for a gang of murderers while in the throes of addiction and early motherhood.

• Phase 2 – Recognition of Irrationality: After fleeing, Laura reflects that her fear was unrealistic. She realizes, “How unrealistic and self‑involved it was to think that those vultures were out to get ME.” This self‑correction is a key step in her cognitive reframing practice, which she explicitly ties to the spiritual text A Course in Miracles in Chapter 9: “Consciously shifting from fear to love each day is the real miracle.” The vultures become a test case for that shift.

• Phase 3 – Awe and Connection: On the second morning, Laura deliberately chooses to override her instinctive fear. She stays still, admires the vultures’ grace, and feels a wave of calm. The birds transform from symbols of death into symbols of natural beauty and effortless flight. Laura describes the moment as “a conscious decision to be in love and awe instead of fear.” The vultures no longer represent a threat; they represent the possibility of seeing the world as beautiful rather than scary. This is the meaning that Laura carries forward into the rest of the chapter, where she applies the same “choose love over fear” mindset to her son Alfie’s autism diagnosis.

Character and Theme Connections

Laura Clery

The vulture encounter is a microcosm of Laura’s entire emotional journey in Idiots. Throughout the memoir, she repeatedly describes her instinct to catastrophize and then her learned ability to step back and reframe. The vultures externalize this inner battle. Laura’s shift from “fight‑or‑flight” to stillness directly parallels the work she does in recovery: “Working the Twelve Steps and trying to live by those principles healed me” (Chapter 2). The vultures also echo her earlier discovery, in Chapter 9, that “when I walk through the day thinking ONLY about what I can gain, it’s oftentimes unfulfilling and anxiety‑inducing. But when I think of the good I can create in the world… I come alive!”

Stephen and Alfie

Laura’s husband Stephen does not appear in the vulture scene itself, but the chapter immediately pivots from the canyon walk to Alfie’s two‑year checkup, where a pediatrician recommends speech therapy and assessment for developmental delays. Laura’s choice to “choose love over fear” with the vultures primes her to approach Alfie’s potential autism diagnosis with openness rather than panic. She demonstrates this when she later reframes autism as “a neurotype with strengths, not a deficit” and commits to “early intervention” and “full presence.” The vultures, then, are not just about Laura’s own anxiety; they are about the courage to meet her child’s differences with acceptance.

Themes

Anne

Laura’s neighbor Anne does not appear in the vulture scene, but her words in other chapters—such as “Individual responsibility. Never run away from working on yourself. Your life is in your hands” [Chapter 5]—echo the self‑accountability Laura practices when she chooses not to run from the vultures. Anne’s later advice to “keep going” (Chapter 10) aligns with the perseverance Laura demonstrates by returning to the canyon the second day.

Study Questions

1. What literal characteristics of vultures make them a fitting symbol for Laura’s fear, and how does Laura’s description of their flight change when she moves from fear to admiration?

Answer: Vultures are scavengers associated with death, decay, and circling predators—all things that naturally trigger fear. Laura first describes them as “giant, shaggy brown birds” that “joined in the widening gyre,” language that evokes circling danger. After she chooses admiration, she focuses on their “beautifully broad wings,” their “graceful” and “effortless” flight, and their “circular choreography.” The shift is from seeing them as agents of death to seeing them as aesthetic, natural performers. The birds themselves have not changed; Laura’s perception has.

2. How does the vulture encounter parallel the “conscious shift from fear to love” that Laura describes in Chapter 9, and why is this parallel important for understanding her recovery?

Answer: In Chapter 9, Laura writes that she consciously chooses to “REPLACE” fear “with LOVE and unwavering faith” as part of her daily practice, a concept she attributes to A Course in Miracles. The vulture scene is a live demonstration of that practice: she first reacts with fear, then corrects herself, and finally makes a “conscious decision to be in love and awe instead of fear.” This parallel shows that the shift is not a one‑time insight but a repeated skill that Laura applies to concrete situations, from financial insecurity (Chapter 9) to parenting (Chapter 10). In recovery, this skill helps her avoid the “ghoulish, debilitating, morbid place” that could trigger relapse.

3. In what ways does the vulture scene prepare Laura—and the reader—for the news about Alfie’s development that she receives later in Chapter 10?

Answer: The vulture scene establishes the emotional template that Laura will use to process Alfie’s autism diagnosis. The key steps are: recognize an initial fear reaction, question its rationality, and then intentionally choose acceptance and even awe. When the pediatrician recommends speech therapy and a developmental assessment, Laura’s first instinct is also fear—“I pretended to be calm, even though my insides were in full panic”—but she quickly pivots to action: “Okay, yeah. I heard it’s super common for little boys to have delayed speech. So cool, we’ll get him assessed.” The vulture encounter shows the reader that this pivot is a practiced skill, not an accident. Later, Laura reframes autism as a “neurotype with strengths,” just as she reframed the vultures as beautiful rather than threatening.

4. Compare Laura’s reaction to the vultures with her earlier reaction to the pizza‑delivery incident described in Chapter 2. What does this comparison reveal about her growth from active addiction to sobriety and motherhood?

Answer: In Chapter 2, Laura is in the paranoid state of new‑motherhood (which she likens to her drug‑addled brain) and misinterprets a pizza delivery as a gang of murderers. She hides in the bathtub and calls a friend for help. The experience is pure fear, with no moment of self‑correction. In the vulture scene, Laura again misinterprets a harmless phenomenon as a threat, but this time she has a different outcome. First, she is able to walk away and later rethink her reaction. Second, she consciously returns the next day and practices “still presence.” The comparison shows that Laura has developed a reflective capacity she lacked earlier. The vulture scene demonstrates the same mental toolkit—awareness of irrational fear, willingness to test reality, and ability to choose a loving perspective—that she uses in her recovery and parenting.