Turkeytale

Blame this on Denny. After reading his blog today, I was inspired to put this together.

We raised all kinds of things on the farm.

It was primarily a dairy farm, but we raised chickens for the eggs and also for meat, pigs for the meat, cats to keep the rodent population down, dogs and horses for amusement.

One year we decided to try raising turkeys, just for the heck of it.

At that time I believed domesticated laying hens were the stupidest creatures on the face of the Earth. I was wrong. Turkeys have to be the holder of that dubious honor. A creature could not be stupider and still live.

We ordered a dozen turkeys from the supplier when we made our spring order for chickens, and they arrived at about the same time. When they ship the chicks, they throw in an extra, because they figure that one will die from shipping and handling. In this case all 13 arrived sound and healthy.

The instructions told us we had to teach the turkeys how to drink from whatever water dispenser we were using, because otherwise they would drown. You were to hold their head in the water until they swallowed and then take it out. Repeat once, and they got the idea.

One of the persistent folk tales is that turkeys will look up at the sky with their mouths open during a thunderstorm and die. I cannot attest to the truth of this, as we never lost any turkeys that way, but it strikes me as likely, seeing how dumb they are.

My little sisters decided that they would make a pet out of the extra turkey. Of course they named him "Lucky" and he had the run of the yard. Come slaughter time in the fall, Lucky got passed over. He grew to be huge. And mean.

The side yard was his territory, and he defended it fiercely. One of his major sources of amusement was to terrorize the dog. The dog at the time (Tschindi) was a half border collie, half coyote, and was the best mouser we ever had on the place. The turkey ambushed him almost daily.

Seeing as the turkey outweighed the dog by about 20 pounds, it was a pretty one sided battle. The turkey also ambushed anyone who wasn't paying attention. After getting ambushed a couple of times myself, every once in a while I would amble casually out into the side yard, and when Lucky was about ready to pounce, I would turn around and give him a good swift kick, and then run away before he could recover.

Down at the end of the driveway we had a power drop which ran the welder and a 120 volt outlet for an old beat up refrigerator. We kept fresh eggs in the refrigerator, which were for sale for 50 cents a dozen. My mother raised the laying hens, fed us all the eggs we needed and kept the "egg money" for little extras for her and the girls.

There was a box next to the refrigerator to deposit the money, so anyone could come by at any time to get eggs even if we weren't there. We trusted people to leave the money, and to the best of my knowledge no one ever stiffed us. If we were home, they would usually come by the house and have a glass of milk or a beer and visit a spell.

We were off at church on Sunday when someone came by to get a dozen eggs, and when we got home we noticed that the turkey was moving mighty slow. We went off on a berry picking expedition up Pack River, and picked several gallons of huckleberries.

When we got home we were greeted with a gruesome site. There were feathers guts and blood all over the side yard, and in the middle of them, chewing on a bone was the dog. He had figured out that Lucky was hurt and couldn't defend himself. He not only killed the turkey, he mutilated him. There was no piece left bigger than a pack of cigarettes.

He had paid that turkey back for every peck and every wing slap he had ever gotten, and looked mighty please with himself.

I get a certain satisfaction every year at Thanksgiving when we stuff the bird in the oven.