Not So Wild Turkey

a momentary chapter in the life of one shy lady

Happy Turkey Day to all!

In honor of a fascinating wild creature, whose domesticated cousin has come to form the centerpiece for many a holiday feast, I am re-sharing this story from my archives.

Have you ever met a wild turkey?
Let me introduce you to a few from my neighborhood!

She materialized like shimmering mist out of the dappled forest, and I held my breath. She was cautious, alert. She fixed me with her gaze, the deep pools of her eyes at once as soft as night and piercing to the heart of all my intentions 🤣 If she found me untrustworthy, she was gone!

This sweet lady entered our lives on the homestead after we had been here for about 5 years. In that time, we had seen Wild Turkey often, and always at a distance. Though I’ve heard many stories about Wild Turkeys becoming habituated and sometimes even aggressive, the turkeys in our area are very shy. They gather in flocks of a dozen or so, and we most often see them foraging out in the middle of a large open field. Just slowing down the car sends the lookouts into alert mode, herding everyone under cover of the nearest treeline.

One time, just once, we glanced out of the windows of our cabin to find an entire flock of turkeys milling around the edge of the forest right there, scratching beneath our various bird feeders for tasty morsels. The sound of our voices inside at normal volume made them jumpy, so the five of us whispered excitedly as we gathered low at the windows, peeking over the windowsills. The group foraged on the move, working their way down the side of our cabin, along the driveway, and back into the forest to emerge elsewhere into larger fields with wider vantage points, no doubt.

All that to say, it was quite unusual and special for us to have this single lady, slowly, gently, making her way up to the cabin to investigate the ground beneath our bird feeders. Of course, our admiration soon caught her attention, and she was gone. In hopes of encouraging her back, we scattered some extra birdseed a little further into the forest, where she might feel a bit less exposed, and maybe even stay awhile.

And it worked! For several weeks, we could count on seeing our lady friend several times a day, for which privilege we cheerfully renewed seed stashes.

For such a big bird, they can be quite stealthy. I mean, not always, of course. Sometimes they are great, dark silhouettes trotting through an expanse of white.

And sometimes, of course, they have to cross the road, which is its own brand of hilarious. Why did the turkey cross the road? 🤷🏼‍♀️ Who can say, but if one goes, they’re all going!

But I was quite shocked how many times I was right there in the cabin, doing any number of things in the living room, only to look out the window and see her right there. And I would grab my camera and slowly edge towards her, advancing in the spaces of her scratch-and-pecks, freezing as her head darted up to swivel-survey her surroundings.

If I moved too quickly or looked overly suspicious to her, she would turn tail and melt back into the dappled forest, leaving me to laugh and shake my head and mutter, “Oh man, I was so close!” On a handful of occasions, I managed to ease to the window just-innocently-enough, managed to raise the camera just-non-threateningly-enough, to capture some moments with this fascinating visitor.

The extra birdseed that we scattered for her was one of those typical mixtures that include a lot of millet. I marveled that such a large bird would painstakingly, patiently, methodically scratch out such tiny seeds to sustain herself. She made the most beautiful scratch-circle on the edge of the forest, and when I would visit it after she was finished, there was not a speck of seed left within that circumference.

She was heartwarmingly tolerant. At the sound of her scratching and pecking, a chipmunk would come scrambling across the mossy forest floor. As she scratched, the chipmunk would dance and nibble around her toes, vacuuming seeds from the newly-overturned surface. She never showed a hint of irritation, in no way begrudging her teeny, furry neighbor a share of the bounty.

She was rarely still. And ever-changing with the light. In direct sunlight, her feathers flashed impossibly bright. In the dappled shade, she was impossibly soft. In the cool mist, I thought she was loveliest of all.

Of course, nothing lasts forever. One day, I glanced up to see her scratching and nibbling ~ and a cautious male approached in the background. The next day there were two males attending. Soon after, all three had vanished one last time into the forest…And yet, that was the happiest of endings in its own sweet way!

Some moments are longer than others. This moment unfolded over a few visits a day, days spanning a few weeks, still such a tiny chapter in the story of a life, now warmly etched into the golden haze of fond memory, coloring my perception of every Wild Turkey I see for the rest of my life :)

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Shy, Light as a Feather

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