An Early Morning Visit From Five Wild Turkeys On The Sunday After Thanksgiving…

ONE TURKEY ON FENCE


TWO OF THOSE TURKEYS ON NEIGHBOR JIM'S ROOF






Today, Sunday November 28, 2010 five of our wild, live, twenty to twenty five pound turkeys re-visited our backyard, and combed our lawn for whatever wild turkeys comb lawns for. Last Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, I was wishing they would come back to visit, and they did, two days after ‘turkey’ day.

Wild turkeys move rather fast; before I could retrieve my digital camera the group had moved over to the area in our back yard in front of our lemon tree, which is next to our garage back door. With my camera in hand, I opened the back door, and exited finding myself standing about eight feet away from these five, large, beautiful birds. They all looked at me with their red and blue faces like I had just dropped in their midst from the planet Mars, and one ran 'like hello' for the back gate, which is only about ten feet away from where we all were standing. It lifted itself upward much like a helicopter rising from a short sprint and up, up and away over the six foot gate it went; all twenty or twenty five pounds of bird.

The remaining four birds scattered, and eventually they each rose upward into the air, in their turn with no effort at all, and landed on our neighbor Jim’s roof. Four wild turkeys on Jim’s roof, can you imagine the sight! Can you imagine the sound my neighbors heard inside their house coming from their roof! I snapped some pictures at this time but wished I had taken pictures as soon as I came through the back garage door because they were only eight feet away from my back door. I guess when I found myself so close to them I was almost as frightened of them as they were of me. I didn’t know what they would do, with me so close to them.

I was still tired after all this excitement so I returned to our house, and went back to bed. At nine thirty I awoke with my husband telling me that the turkeys were back, and walking around on the blacktopped street. Here in the ‘country’ we have blacktopped streets but no sidewalks. My husband told me that the wild turkeys were hanging around a speed limit sign across the street that is adjacent to one of our neighbors neatly kept front yards.

I sleepily made it to our front door, and out onto our driveway. I didn’t see anything unusual on the street or at the street sign. I missed their departure. Then overheard I heard the wooshing sound of large, flapping wings coming towards me.
I looked up and saw four wild turkeys, four twenty to twenty five pound birds, flying over my roof and then over my head. What a sight it is to see birds of that size flying, and so close to the ground. I remarked to myself that all I need to see now is a big, pink pig fly overhead, and my day would be complete!

It was then that I spied one lone turkey waiting, across the street, waiting for the rest of the group. For some reason four of the birds had returned to either our backyard or our neighbor's yard, and they were now flying back to meet with their friend that waited across the street for them.

WOW, what a Sunday morning I had today! I have lived here on the golf course since April 2004, and this is the first year I have seen the wild turkeys. They are all very healthy looking but their numbers appear to have decreased.
I still think that someone living at the other end of Gabilan Golf has a freezer stuffed with dressed wild turkeys; probably the same person whose car was attacked by the group this past fall.

Living here in Paradise is never dull; it is often as interesting as going out our garage back door, and looking into the red and blue faces of five live, wild turkeys…at Thanksgiving time 2010. By the way, when the four turkeys were walking around on our neighbor Jim’s roof I said the gobble, gobble in their direction, and I got an answer back from one of the birds.

It was definitely a ‘gobble’ reply that I got from the turkey but it had a slight shrill sound to it. Remember that I wrote in my blog entry entitled “Jurassic Park At Eight In The Morning...” how they make a sound that is horribly high pitched when they are looking for each other. Today I learned that when they want to say gobble, gobble they can, and I guess we all did some gobble, gobble ourselves last Thursday on Thanksgiving.

Take care, good wishes from both of us here in Paradise just outside of Hollister, California, U.S.A..

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra