TURKEYS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

I was sitting on the front porch the other day and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were two full grown turkey gobblers strutting across the street to promenade in my neighbor’s front yard. They seemed perfectly at home. They walked around and pecked a lot, then flew up into the trees on the wooded lot across the street.
One of the neighbor boys came out and I asked him if they had any new turkey pets. He told me that a man a few blocks away used to raise turkeys from eggs. He sold his house and the remaining turkeys were part of the deal. The person who bought the house had no wish to raise the turkeys, so he turned them loose. They apparently liked the area and stayed. “Yesterday, they were in your front yard,” my neighbor told me. They seem to belong to all of us. We seem to live in a board sanctuary by default. I guess the turkeys are savvy enough to get out of the street if there are cars coming by. The man who sold the house has been gone for some months.
I wonder if the animal control officers know about them. One of them is my brother and I’m not going to tell him. He probably would leave them alone anyway. Any turkey smart enough to survive in town deserves to live out his normal life span in as much peace as a turkey can find in a small town. What is the lifespan of an unmolested turkey anyway?
I look forward to seeing the turkeys strut around the neighborhood. WE have a live and let live attitude around here for the most part. The only thing that really disturbs us is really loud music or gasoline powered generators or blower packs. WE don’t have too much noise in small towns in rural Southwest Alabama. The only regular noise is the train that comes through town a few times a day. If we even notice it, it is music to our ears. It’s all in what you get used to. There used to be a mill whistle that went off twice a day until a few years ago when the mill closed. We took it as a matter of course. We sort of miss it now that it’s gone. If the train quit coming through we wouldn’t have any excitement at all on a regular basis, unless the turkeys multiply and produce offspring. If we get a lot of turkeys in the neighborhood, the word will get around. We’ll be overrun with birdwatchers or turkey hunters, whichever get here first. There are probably more turkey hunters in the area than birdwatchers, but even they won’t shoot pets. I guess that’s what these turkeys are, the new neighborhood pets.