The sound was cacophonous. The dogs were howling and 28 turkeys in my yard were gobbling. Then I started howling. 28 turkeys? Didnât they get the Thanksgiving memo? But I guess most of us do not eat wild turkeys (unless it comes in a bottle). In my eternal quest to shed my city-slicker ways, I launched my education on The Wild Turkey.
The wild turkey is a North American bird, an ancestor to the domestic turkey which was cultivated in Southern Mexico. I have no idea how one âcultivatesâ a domestic turkey. Is it house-trained? Have they sowed their wild oats? OK, so our wild guys are sort of like great aunts and uncles to the demurer turkeys. But our turkeysâthe wild bunchâknow how to adorn themselves. Adult males, Toms, are rather colorful with blacks, browns, reds, greens and some other stuff sprinkled in. Hot stuff, those guys! (I did not say hot stuffing). The females? Not so hot. But when a male gets âhot,â a thingy on his nose expands. Meaning, watch out little ladies. Tom is on your trail⌠or your tail.
Both Toms and Hens (not a hen-pecked Tom) have beards. Who gets the razor in the morning? Who is the tougher bird? Did you know that turkeys go for threesomes, even foursomes or more (you get to explain that to your kid), but it allows for survival of the fledgling fittest with all male egos left intact. No one knows whoâs the Daddy. Paternity testing is not a thing among turkeys.
Back to who is tougher? Wild Hens and Toms are the power couple in the turkey game. They are more gamey, court-tough, but supposedly quite yummy if cooked correctly. One drawback for me is that wild turkeys eat deer ticks among other insects. That is both good and bad news re: deer ticksâdonât want them on me, donât want them in me.
I have learned an encyclopediaâs worth of information about wild turkeys (tell your kids that the encyclopedia came before Wikipedia and was actually accurate). There are 6-7 million wild turkeys in the U.S. with Alabama being the most populous state. Why? No one knows. Second to that, is my yard. I invite all to a turkey âviewingâ. Would I dare say âshootâ after my last article in The Edge proposed offing the deer?
