{thanksful: 14 – turkey in the yard]

Messy. Noisy. Nosy.

It’s an unfair fight, animals v. suburbia. Usually, suburbia wins, but… not always. Under the porch, we’ve had raccoons move in, and once a brilliantly red fox used our back wall for her personal potty station; out walking one morning, we encountered a rangy, long-legged coyote who surveyed us coolly and loped on. We have squirrels we’d like to sell, or we’d give them away for free, and then there are Franklin’s little nuisances, the turkeys. Until the Sierra Club put a stop to it in the eighties some time, turkeys – a California non-native species – were imported from the Midwest, because… someone thought more hunters would be interested. Unfortunately, hunters in NorCal, at least couldn’t keep up with the numbers, and maybe were less interested, what with the abalones and the fish and the blacktail and the wild pigs (I’m going to go ahead and be grateful we ONLY have the turkeys; boars are vicious AND destructive x110) geese, doves, ducks, quail, and what all else to also hunt/gather. Additionally, the turkeys were like, “Pfft, the woods. Where’s a house with a remote?” and moved in to more suburban landscapes. And so, here we find ourselves. With turkeys.

Toms in the Spring are the WORST, striding about in the middle of the street, doing threat displays and getting off on the equivalent of avian testosterone poisoning. They make an unavoidable nuisance of themselves, saber rattling and running at the postman.

They are second in annoyance to the hens, who win the Clueless Motherhood awards, dragging their poults along through neighborhoods in search of dog food and bird seed and any and all of the olives – apples – windfall anything – from everyone’s trees. Then, too, stand in driveways and on rooftops and trees and shriek shrilly at their wee ones, insisting that said little ones shriek back their assurance that they haven’t yet been eaten by something bigger. It is all VERY loud, and generally, very early. Because Nature.

Wait. Where’s my baby?”

But, today, I’m not eye-rollingly annoyed with them. I’m not calling Animal Control because some yahoo tangled one up in rope, and it was strolling along, dragging a huge knot and wouldn’t let me get close enough to help it. Today, I’m okay with the turkeys, because one of them dropped a perfect feather in my front yard.

Okay, it’s silly. But, it felt like a gift. I will take it in that spirit, recompense for waking me up more times than I can count, occasionally chasing me, threatening me, and scratching in the yard like a ginormous chicken.

One perfect feather. Thanks, I’ll take it.

Mental Health Check: Never underestimate the soothing power of crafting, people. Winding twine around a cheap straw wreath can put your head in a good space. Having glue on your fingers to pick off is just a bonus. (Question: why do we enjoy picking off glue? Talk amongst yourselves.) I’m slowly wrestling my anxiety down by sheer dint of repetition: there’s nothing I can do right now, so look toward something I can do. Right now, I can get prepped for the people coming over to my Thanksgiving party, I can plan my decorations, find a fitting prize for Dart Board Turkey Tic Tac Toe (involving darts, balloons, water and and bird seed. Impale these balloons at your own risk.)