Stop-Action Turkeys

I can remember the first time I saw a wild turkey. We were renting a house in the middle of an industrial park--sort of this island of woods and fields in the middle of this huge airport industrial park, maybe half a mile from the airport. We had this very long half-a-mile driveway, and we were on our way out--the driveway dumped us in the middle of an aerospace contractor's parking lot--when we encountered this huge bird sitting in the middle of our driveway. It was way too big and ugly to be one of our chickens, and not ugly enough to be a turkey vulture. We stared and stared, and finally I said something brilliant like, "Is that a turkey?"

Since then turkeys have become so freakin' commonplace I am practically shooing them out of the way with my feet whenever I have to walk to the car. Okay, maybe not QUITE so bad, but I don't think a week goes by when I don't see a flock of them. So this sequence yesterday is no big whoop. Just that I had my cell phone camera handy and I kept shooting and when I was reviewing the pictures it just struck me as a stop-action animation sequence.

It's Mom Turk and her six little turklings. They were on the side of the road. I stopped the car and as I took the first picture Mom Turk interpreted my car stopping as permission to cross in front of me, so they did.

Interestingly enough the feather on the dashboard is a turkey feather. I think it's a primary (wing) feather. I found it in upper state NY when my Favorite Husband and I first got Rosie and took her for a (barf-filled) drive one afternoon. We found this nice overgrown tractor road to walk down, and there it was in the tall grass, pretty as can be. I brought it back to the truck and left it for a silly joke present for my Favorite Husband. Some sort of Magical Feather of Love or some such nonsense. He just kind of left it on the dashboard, which is the sort of romantic fool he is. I didn't think anything of it until a few years later when my then Five-Year-Old Friend inquired about it and I suggested he might have it but we should ask my Favorite Husband's permission first. He was actually a bit shocked that I would give away "his feather". So I was like, fine, keep the feather; the kid's five years old so he'll forget he even asked. Which turned out to be the case. So anyway this stupid feather has been sitting in the truck for AGES now. I thought if my Favorite Husband was so attached to it he would move it to the NEW car when we switched cars after the Deathtrap died, but apparently not. And now I feel I can't get rid of this silly feather for fear of hurting his feelings or something.

See what happens when you don't communicate? You wind up with big giant turkey feathers in your truck. Still we make it work, somehow. The trick is to not care enough about the stupid feather one way or another. Pick your battles--or, even better, avoid them like the plague in the first place. That's the Mojo way!

Mojo