A local TV reported in Sacramento got more than she bargained for when she tried to get up-close and personal with a wild turkey:
Tag wild turkeys
Faster Than A Flock Of Turkeys
Futility Closet shares this tale of the Old West and the turkey herders who made it great.
(I am also sad to report that the wild turkey that we have seen so many times in our neighborhood has not been around at all this year, and I am of the opinion that he has fallen prey to the same coyote who killed my cats this summer.)
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Varmints
Apparently there’s a family of foxes living in my mother’s backyard. My brother Tim got some cute pictures of the kits. I don’t know if Billy The Exterminator makes house calls to Maine, but at the very least it’s time to call the local animal control officer. Having happy woodland creatures stop by for a visit is one thing, but when they move in for keeps it’s usually bad news for everyone, including the happy woodland creatures.
This is our neighborhood turkey. He has been in our yard a couple of times, but we see him all around our neighborhood. He usually appears when we’ve had rainy weather, so I’m a little surprised we haven’t seen him more recently. What always amazes me about wild turkeys is how completely unafraid they seem to be of people and/or cars. On the morning I took that picture, he walked right up in front of the car, and even as I slowly drove past him he showed no signs of fleeing.
On warm days, I often leave my car windows open when it is parked in our driveway, and Harry likes to climb into the car and nap there. One morning as Charlotte and I were leaving to take her to school, I caught him trying to sneak back out and got this photo. Since Maynard died, Harry has become an almost exclusively outdoor cat. He’ll even go outside in the pouring rain of his own volition. I had been calling him into the house at bedtime, but recently he started waking me up at 3:00 a.m. to let him back outside, so now I just leave him out.
Here’s a clip of a couple of morning news anchors in Michigan freaking out when a raccoon wandered into their studio through the open loading dock door:
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Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You
If you read Universal Hub with any regularity, you know that the gang of wild turkeys that terrorize the people in Brookline have been up to no good lately. They routinely chase postal workers, stop traffic, and rumble with the Hell’s Grannies in Coolidge Corner.
The Boston Globe has finally wised up to the growing galline menace, and also managed to discover that it’s not just Brookline, the whole Greater Boston Metropolitan Area is a veritable hotbed of turkeydom (Hey, you Yankees fans, watch it with the jokes).
In fact, just yesterday morning, as I was turning onto the main road near my house, traffic was backed up a quarter-mile in either direction by the wild turkey who lives in our neighborhood. He was casually strolling back and forth across Route 62, deliberately oblivious to the Massholes honking at him. We see this turkey once in a while; it’s a big male who stands almost as tall as me. He also has a harem of three or four hens who live with him in the woods near the school where Charlotte went to kindergarten last year. Luckily for them, the local coyote lives in a completely different neighborhood.
The other thing that Boston Globe doesn’t tell you about wild turkeys — they can fly a bit. They don’t soar like an eagle, mind you, but I have seen our neighborhood turkey jump, flap his wings and float through the air for a couple hundred feet. Imagine having that fly into your windshield.