Fifteen wild turkeys walking on the golf course...in the rain...

It’s Sunday and my husband and I were reminiscing this morning about the Wild Turkeys that roam the golf course that borders our home. We visited an ill neighbor yesterday who is in Hazel Hawkins Hospital, and the neighbor’s wife told us that one day last year, 2009, she saw Wild Turkeys jumping out of our sixty foot, Cedar-Pine tree that sits on the corner of the front of our property, across the street from our neighbor.
She said, ‘turkeys jumping out of your pine tree’, she said that she ‘counted fifteen of them’.
I casually remarked “how can a turkey get into a sixty foot pine tree” to which one of the other visitors remarked that Wild Turkeys can fly up into a tree because they haven’t had their wings clipped like domestic turkeys have their wings clipped.
I learned something new here, that I never thought about before!

I thought before yesterday that my experience with those turkeys last January during a rainstorm was the most unique, but now I know that my neighbor’s wife, who is also our neighbor, has had an even more unique experience than I have ever had.
Ahhh, living in Paradise, is sometimes a bit strange!

Normally while my husband and I sit at our kitchen table, looking out our kitchen window, we can see everything happening on the golf course on the other side of our fence. This is because our fence is five feet high, and the golf course’s topography is composed of hills and valleys with some of the hills in front of our view.

We see golfers riding along on the golf course in their battery operated golf carts that are legal here to drive on the streets in our gated community, because we, the homeowners, own the streets. It’s a bit expensive to own and maintain streets, but that is what it takes sometimes to be able to bend the rules in Paradise.

Last January 2010, during a night time wind and rain storm that lasted from Sunday evening into Monday morning, our back fence, the one that separates our yard from the golf course, blew down. In the morning we sat together at our kitchen table as we do most mornings, and one of us opened the blinds, and saw that our fence was leaning against some of our shrubbery in our back yard.
Thankfully the fence didn’t fall into our rose bushes, which are still young, and may not be able to withstand such an impact.

We planted five of our six rose bushes as bare root roses, and bare root roses take a couple of years to spread their roots under ground, and get going on the upward growth journey, up towards the sky, and out to the side to meet their neighbor roses; finally their journey cumulates in growing dozens of beautiful roses. After accomplishing their goals, we have to cut them back when they get unruly, but as the years go by, the roots are firmly embeded in the ground they grow in, and it is easier for the established plants to regrow their limbs, and dozens of beautiful roses again!
So we were lucky that our rose bushes survived the fence falling down.
But we weren't lucky with our fence. Our fence was a goner!
And since January it has been raining and raining here, so just now, late May, we are getting bids from outside contractors so we can put up a replacement fence to take the place of the one that blew down back in January.

Well, back in January 2010 after our fence blew down on the Monday, on the following Wednesday morning during which there was a light rain storm, my husband was sitting alone at our kitchen table looking out the kitchen window. His sight of view was over the fallen fence, at the golf course. He saw a group of large brownish/grayish birds with long legs and long necks, casually walking, in the rain, down the golf course. He called to me to come see the sight. I arrived in the kitchen and looked out the window to see them, I counted fifteen of them, casually walking along in the light rain, pecking at the grass for whatever they were looking for. One of these large birds flared out his tail feathers and I said; “good lord, that is a turkey”.

I called the golf course’s clubhouse and spoke with Mr. Boyd, the man in charge of maintenance for the course. I said, “Do you know that you have a flock of turkeys walking around on the golf course today?” His answer floored me!
He told me that he was surprised that I hadn’t seen the Wild Turkeys before.
He went further to tell me that they were residents of the golf course, and had been there when my husband and I moved here several years before. Mr. Boyd went on to say that sometimes the birds cross the street so they can walk as a group down the other golf course that is across the street from the one we live on.

While we have been in our backyard we have watched the resident jackrabbits on the golf course sitting on a hill watching us in our backyard, we have several brown and rust squirrels that visit our backyard, at least one possum, I'm not sure if it is a he or a she, skunks, ducks and geese that travel over head quacking and honking all the way to their pond. We have different types of wood peckers, Bermuda Barn Swallows that love to fly as a group into our back porch, doves, several large, black Corvus as big as house cats, blue Scrub Jays, red breasted Robins, Red Winged Blackbirds, a lot of hummingbirds in different colors, and now I know that we also have a flock of fifteen Wild Turkeys that love to walk in the rain on the golf course in front of our back yard, and also love to roost in our sixty-foot Cedar-Pine tree that is in our front yard. I find myself now wondering if those Wild Turkeys also love to watch us in our house when I open the drapes in my front window that is close enough to our sixty-foot Cedar-Pine tree for them to be able to see us in our house?

Life is very interesting here in Paradise; here just outside of Hollister, California.

This has been another true-life story of Carol Garnier Dutra,
a.k.a. MOM in Hollister
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

P.S. Back in the early nineteen seventies the golf courses here in Ridgemark, and all of the property where homes now stand, were all a domesticated turkey farm. The flock of turkeys my husband and I watched are living here in memory of the turkey farm that once was this whole place.
The previous resident turkey farm may also have something to do with how rich the soil is here for growing roses and lilies that are the main flowers I maintain in my garden. Unfortunately weeds also grow very well in the rich soil here as anyone who has to maintain a weed free garden can attest to.
Ahhh, Paradise is simple, comfortable, yet at times, Paradise can be complicated.

Here’s to the resident turkeys; may they thrive, and may they all, always cross the street with caution!.
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