Trying to get eaten by turkey vultures

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Today's kid client and I have a running joke. When we hike, and there are turkey vultures circling over us, we play dead to see if they'll come down and eat us. Of course, we always fail, but we then laugh and consider how turkey vultures know that we're not really dead. I suggested that maybe they can see when an animal is about to die, because they move slowly an unevenly, but I admit to him that it's just a hypothesis. It's hard for me to believe that this kid sometimes attacks his teachers in school, hitting and biting them. He's sweet and curious, like most 8-year-old boys. I think that there should be more programs for ADHD boys that involve getting out in nature. Among the things that this boy knows, just from our discussions on hikes: Turkey vultures are "scavengers" and only eat things that are already dead; hawks like to eat bunnies and other small rodents; you can eat miner's lettuce but must avoid poison oak; boilers near mines could blow up in the late 1800s, killing miners; a lot of babies died in the late 1800s from diseases we could cure today; you can catch a juvenile Western Fence Lizard just by putting your hand in front of him and tapping behind him; sheep and goats can be used for wildfire abatement; some rock cliffs look harder to climb than they really are; animals who eat meat have stinkier poop than herbivores; if there's a word on a sign that you can't read, just slow down and sound it out. Taking these kids out hiking satisfies my secret desire to be Tom Sawyer, but I manage to sneak in enough edumacation to justify my wanton self-satisfaction.