Turkey Lurking

Wild turkeys couldn't drag me away . . . from the window this morning because they were the very point of my excitement. Looking out across to the green hill opposite of our home, there were nine of them, one male and his harem. The neighbor lady next door, who is mostly reclused with emphysema (we can hear her cough throughout the day and night) used to feed them and when I first moved to town, we watched a bunch of the birds strut down the middle of our street.

I grew up across from a chicken farm that became a turkey farm in Fresno. That was when there were still farmers in Fresno. (Well, there still are, but that gorgeous agricultural land is fast being paved over, as in "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.") We kids played in the poultry runs after the birds all disappeared in the late autumn.

If everything we connect with in our lives is here to teach us something, I suppose turkeys have taught me not to trust stereotypes. To be a "turkey" is to be foolish, awkward, dim-witted, a loser. But these are magnificent birds and it is good to see the wild ones. Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird, and I have to say, if the turkey had beat out the eagle, perhaps we would be a more accommodating society, learning to live with the earth rather than constantly soaring over it, trying to figure out what we could strike next.