FEATURES:
- Runs almost as fast as Usain Bolt, albeit in bursts
- Flies faster than most hummingbirds,
albeit in bursts - Gobbles, purrs, yelps, chirps, clicks, and kee-kees
It is a truth, if not universally acknowledged then at least generally believed, that Ben Franklin put forth the turkey as our national bird. This is not true. He did criticize the eagle on a draft of the Great Seal as looking rather like a turkey, and in so doing he did call the turkey, however un-seal-worthy, “a much more respectable Bird” than an eagle. Eagles, he said, did not make their livings honestly, being too lazy to fish for themselves. A turkey, in contrast, besides being “a true original native of America,” was, by his lights, “though a little vain and silly,” still “a bird of courage.”
That was not to praise the turkey to the skies. That was to throw shade on the eagle. But never mind. Meleagris gallopavo is indeed just as vain and silly as its name, gallopavo—meaning “chicken peacock”—would suggest. What an improbable creature, after all, all puff and strut, with wattles and a snood that change color like a mood ring: going from pale gray-blue when it’s feeling chill, to hot chili red when it’s, um, not. Notably, the snood also engorges and elongates, especially during mating season, or when its owner is simply in the mood for action. As for which is the “bird of courage,” the eagle or the turkey—that is a question beyond the scope of this essay. More important: Is yesterday’s bird of courage today’s domestic terrorist? At present, up and down the East Coast, we poor plodding humans struggle to protect ourselves against the protected turkeys. Wild turkeys are a conservation success! Large as they figured in the first Thanksgiving, as of 1851 there was nary one to be seen in my home state of Massachusetts. And yet now they once again rival the bunny rabbit in multiplication enthusiasm.
To clarify, wild turkeys are not doomed, domed butterballs perfect for stuffing in late November. They are snood-engorged gang goons focused on street domination. They see three times better than we do, and natural as it may be to claim they all look alike, they would make no such claim about us. If you feel like they remember you, you are correct. They do. That said, it is not always personal when they surround your minivan so you cannot get out. Look at their snoods: it may just be their mood. They will surround your car, too, so you can’t get in, or chase your car down the street, or mob your front grills, a.k.a. their all-you-can-eat bug buffet. And only sometimes is this personal (though then it completely is).
Happily, they can be mesmerized, especially by themselves. Savvy car owners realize they should on no account wash their cars in the spring, especially if they have dark cars, as turkeys will fixate on their reflections in the shiny surface of a clean dark car and peck at their alter egos for hours. They also stalk pregnant women and terrorize cats, and though they loiter in front of bookstores, staring into the windows, no one is fooled: in books, as in all things, they seek only their own reflection.
In our neighborhood, they will roost in our neighbor’s tree across the street, spending the night in its fair branches—first, so they might fertilize its roots in characteristic fashion, the females depositing delicate spiral turds, while the males dump J-shaped plops. But mostly they rest there so they might rise perfectly situated to dig up our other neighbor’s daffodil bulbs. These, as it happens, are not just any daffodil bulbs. These are daffodil bulbs our former neighbors planted to commemorate their great love. They met in Switzerland and chose each other in an era when that was not done; and as their Great Decision was made in a daffodil field, they later filled their whole front yard with daffodils to e’er remember it. That is to say, that yard is their Taj Mahal.
Or, rather, it was. (Daffodil bulbs are, it seems, a great turkey delicacy.) I hold out hope that, discriminating creatures that they are, turkeys can be trained to be mesmerized by their reflections in Teslas. In the meanwhile—dare I say it?—what a bunch of turkeys.
