Turkey Obsession

I am always amazed by the things that obsess my mind. Maybe obsession isn’t exactly the correct word, maybe fascination is better.

We will go with fascination.

I am fascinated by the wildlife that we see here in our little corner of Frozen Northeastern Ohio. I just never know what I might see or hear on any given day.

Deer? Oh we have those. That is old hat. Remember how much I LOVE the deer.

Little small rodent like things? We have those too. That is why we have Decon mouse be gone. And we also have our share of chipmunks. You can tell that there are more coyotes in the area because we have fewer chipmunks.

Skunks? Oh yes, yes we do.

Owls? You bet. They hoot at night and I love it.

Birds of prey? Yes, hawks and Bald Eagles.

Coyotes? Hoo boy, they are creepy when they sing in the woods.

But the most elusive thing in woods are the turkeys. We can hear them clucking and calling. But we rarely see them. They are usually shy. I say usually because there was this little incident a while back. And, of course, there was the recent Turkey Mating Cabal that I witnessed in a local field. But for the most part we don’t see them.

We do have a tom and harem that live in the woods. I saw them yesterday in a neighbor’s yard but they scooted away when I drove down the street. And then came this morning….

HHBL is getting ready to leave for the office, putting his stuff in his car. I am at my usual spot in my office, doodling on the computer when I hear…

“DEB, DEB, turkeys!”

“Turkeys! I didn’t know that Congress was coming to the house for a visit? Oh, you mean REAL turkeys. Oops.”

So I whip out to the garage, making sure that Max is still in the house and sure enough, there he is, Mr. Tom and his women. They are just progressing through the woods that are between our house and the neighbors.

I had a Jurassic Park moment, “They DO move in herds!” and then I realized that, SHOOT, I need to get the camera.

So I run, quietly, back into the house and grab my camera.

SHOOT! I need my telephoto lens. RATS! I have to dig it out of my camera bag. Have you ever noticed that when you are trying to do something like get out a different lens to put on your camera because there is a shot that you don’t want to miss that all of a sudden you don’t have 10 working fingers you have ten, semi-paralyzed thumbs.

I manage to get the lens on and run on tippy toes (and slippers) back out the the driveway. Whew they were still there, slowly making their way towards the back. The day was dark and dreary and I didn’t have my tri-pod set up. I didn’t have THAT much time. The pictures are not as good as I would like but…..

but…..

I am just totally fascinated by these supremely ugly birds.

There were 10 females and one male. He knew that I was there, he let me know that he knew and every once in a while he would look at me and fan out his tail feathers and say, “Yeah, stupid person, I know you are there but you had better just stay there. My women are eating.”

I followed them as far into the woods as I could. I had slipped on my gardening clogs so I wasn’t tromping around in my slippers. Finally they moved on down into the ravine and along the stream.

I turned around to make my way back to the house and almost stepped in this….
Did I mention that I am not fond of deer? I managed to step over the pile at the last moment but I thought it would be uplifting to end this post with a picture of deer poop.

I care about you, can’t you tell.