Turkeys In The Straw

A flock of wild turkeys regularly makes its way across the west side of our property, traveling south each morning through the trees toward Saddleback Ridge, then, casting long shadows in the glow of the late afternoon light, they travel back again, heading north into our neighbor Jody’s yard and beyond. When I step outside into the cold morning, I can sometimes hear the turkeys as they converse, clucking and gobbling back and forth, an exchange that, to my ears, sounds like, “Here I am, where are you?”  “I’m over here; where are you?”

Though it’s already spring, the ground is still covered in snow and it’s easy to see the flock as it travels back and forth on its daily migration – large, silhouetted forms that alternately lumber or skitter through my line of sight, a family of wild and pre-historic creatures that make me imagine the movements and migrations of dinosaurs or of bison crossing the plains.

While Willie and I are on our morning walk, I wonder what those turkeys are finding to eat – what can they be eating when the deer and the squirrels and so many other animals are hungry and struggling to survive these last, icy days of winter.  There can’t be much for them in the way of grain or grasses or insects – not that I’m entirely sure what wild turkeys eat, anyway.

Each of us bundled up against the cold, Willie and I head east on our road, then turn south on Saddleback Ridge and start our daily uphill climb.  Willie displays no sign of increased effort as we ascend maybe sixty feet in a quarter mile, but this is where my breathing becomes audible and I can feel my heart rate increase, can “hear” my heart beating in my ears.  This is good for me, I think during this mini workout.  The heart is a muscle, after all.

I’m scanning the snowy woods off to my right, looking for the turkeys when the leash  goes taut.  Just up ahead, the entire flock is walking along the road, also heading for the top of the hill.  Willie is standing at attention, his ears up, his every muscle tensed to run – which he would surely do were he not tethered to me.  The turkeys are aware of us, too, and their meandering gaits become a nervous, serpentine trot, with birds feinting left and right, crossing and recrossing each others’ paths.  I look down and see turkey footprints in the snow, prints as big as my splayed hand.  Clearly excited, Willie follows the trail, sticking his nose directly into each and every footprint.  There was one here!  And here!  And here and here and here!  “Yes, Willie,” I say, gathering up the slackened lead, “all those footprints will smell the same, and so…” But there was one here, too!  And here!  And here and here and here!

It occurs to me quite regularly these days that adopting this little mutt has been a gateway to experiences I wouldn’t be having otherwise.  In other words, Willie is taking me places, and as we close in on the nervous flock, four or five birds take flight, coming to rest in bare branches high above our heads.  As if someone had fired a starting pistol, many of the birds then run fill tilt away from us and up the hill while the remainder scatter to the left and right, attempting to camouflage themselves among the trees and bare sticks poking up through the snow.  Willie looks left and right, then straight up where the few treed turkeys look down upon us, their wattles dangling like pendulums as the gobbling all around us commences – a general murmur, a sound that binds the birds as a group, even as they are separated by distance and by a human and a canine, tied together by a nylon strap, both of us unable to fly.

I’m here, where are you?  I’m here, where are you?