New Year’s Message from a Real Turkey

Yesterday, New Year’s Eve, was clear and cool, ideal weather for a hike in the mountains (though I would have gone no matter the weather). My route followed a big loop, up a ridge, turn right, down, left, up and then back onto the same trail that I had used outbound.

About a third of the way down the last ridge, the trail passes through a thick expanse of laurel. If you aren’t familiar with this mountain shrub, it grows to about ten feet, is very ‘woody’ meaning you can’t push your way through it and it branches from base to top, so you can’t walk under it. The trail is a narrow channel that I have kept clear by constantly clippering out the invading laurel growth.

As I was about midway through this area, I saw, in front of me, exactly in the middle of the trail, a wild turkey squatting on the ground. It had not been there when I went up the same trail not long before. It looked like it was laying an egg. It was facing toward me but slightly to my right, neck erect, head up, looking steadily into the distance beyond me.

I clapped my hands, yelled, waved my arms. Nothing had any visible effect on the bird. There wasn’t room to get around it, and I didn’t want to try stepping (or jumping) over the thing. Wild turkeys are both large and strong. The fixed gaze of this one now seemed positively baleful. It must be sick or injured but its eyes were clear and unblinking.

I ended up going around it by detouring through the laurel. Crouching, thrashing, grumbling, I came back to the trail below the turkey. From that angle I saw that the bird had damage at the back end of its abdomen. Pushing its side gingerly with the toe of my hiking boot caused the entire bird to wobble. It was dead and completely rigid, though how it managed to die in such a perfectly sublime, lifelike pose is beyond me. Wings folded, legs tucked under the body, neck up, head looking straight forward, eyes clear. Most probably it was injured by a hunter and lay down to die, but why or how this comfortable, upright posture?

If you read this blog regularly, you know how much I like analogies, so you can imagine all the possibilities for extraction of correlations I could make from this story; truth, reality, being fooled, history, etc. not to mention the rich opportunity to drag out famous quotes about the road/trail of life and various recommended responses to blockages or uncertainty. But it’s New Year’s Day, so I’ll let you off light.

My only moral-of-the-story is that if you live with Jack Russell Terriers, expect things like this to happen to you. I should have immediately remembered that the one that was with me yesterday was AWOL for most of the hike. She must have found the turkey, dragged it back to the trail with intention of taking it home, then realized that since it weighed about twice as much as she does and home was about half a mile away, that it wasn’t going to work.

On the other hand, she may have intended it exactly as it played out. Why else would the bird have been exactly centered in the trail, upright, and turned just enough to conceal its injury while appearing to be looking nearly toward where I would be as I returned home?

- Julie