On Sunday morning I woke up to a sort of screeching, clicking, weird throaty sound coming from outside my open bedroom window.
When something squawks and makes a ruckus up there in the tree tops I assume it’s that damn squirrel. He’s always gathering acorns and he makes like a really big deal about it, as if he’s the only squirrel who’s working.
I bet his friends think he’s annoying too.
Anyway, I was groggy, sleeping in a bit after a weekend of singing and late nights. I thought to myself, wow, that squirrel is sounding a little off, like, he’s got laryngitis or something.
Except I wasn’t quite sure about the diagnosis.
Then I wasn’t quite sure it was a squirrel really.
Because it wasn’t.
I stretched and rolled over to take a look and thought, huh, that squirrel has sure grown…into a turkey.
Yup. I guess we have wild turkeys now. Like a lot of them. They come gobbling down from the coulee in the morning to see what’s shaking by the house.
All fifteen or so.
And they’re brave. Because we have a bobcat type animal, remember? And that bobcat type animal is brave too. She’s brave and like not even close to the size of a turkey. She’s more like the size of a pretty small cat, despite her wild pedigree. But it doesn’t matter, she flings her body at them anyway. Like launches herself, full force, paws up, claws out, teeth showing with no regard for what she might do if she actually latched on to one of those things.
I’d like to see that. The damn cat clinging to the back of a turkey as it screeches and flops to safety in the tree outside my window. I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.
Good Lord it can get weird out here sometimes.
Anyway, I rolled out of bed to take a look after Husband declared the cat attack. I wanted to see for myself the shenanigans. I wanted to catch a glimpse of these turkeys.
I squinted and shaded my sleepy eyes with my hand and counted…one….two…three…
Six flew and flopped out of my tree…
And one on the roof.
Pooping.
And it’s the same story this morning.
If you need me I’ll be Googling “stuffing recipes”…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
We’re not even on a ranch and we’ve got these turkeys walking around here too! And it looks like they made little baby turkeys this year. As if we needed more reasons for the male to act defensive and territorial…If you find some good stuffing recipes, maybe you could share them, I’m sure they would be of use to others 😉
Yup, they do taste good. Just remember that they probably don’t have all of that fat oil injected into them, so cook ’em slower and longer and not as hot in the oven!
My parents have had Turkeys at their house for quite a few years now; not on purpose, they just started showing up one year. There were a couple of Thanksgivings where we had fresh turkey because the dog got one of them around the neck. (She was just a free spirit dog who was tired of the turkey’s crapping on her patio where she liked to lay in the sun…) We could never figure out though why on earth they wanted to peck at our tires as we drove down the street. We always drove slowly down the street because we were afraid we’d run one of them over. They didn’t care when the car was parked but once the tires were moving they wanted to run up beside the car and peck incessantly at those rotating tires…A very peculiar bird brained animal indeed.
I’m laughing, because at the first mention of wild turkeys, my first thought was of Thanksgiving and how with luck, you won’t have to buy a bird this year! With a good deep-freeze, you won’t have to buy one for Christmas dinner either.
I bet his friends think he’s annoying too. 😀
love the “laughing” horse photo …
I enjoyed your post! I live on a small-holding in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and there are a number of crazy things that happen here as well…not to mention crazy visitors as well. I can relate!
Your pictures are beautiful as well. Meant to say that.
I think living on the ranch and living Russia are quite similar, sometimes you just got to do what ya got to do. Been living here and learning these lessons. Enjoy your blog.
Pingback: A really scary story. | Meanwhile, back at the ranch...