WHY TURKEYS DON’T LIVE IN TOWN

There is a reason turkeys live in the wild and not in towns. This was brought home to me in a very personal way last Saturday morning. My last blog was about the turkeys roaming my neighborhood. The neighbors and I were enjoying turkey watching as the pair of fine gobblers meandered about the streets and yards around us. I had run in to get my camera to take their picture last week and discovered that my camera battery needed recharging. I had vowed to keep it at the ready. I was armed with it last weekend. I was sitting on the porch with my cup of tea contemplating life when I heard an explosion worthy of a bomb, not once, but twice. The lights in my house went off. It sounded the way it does when a squirrel gets on a utility pole and blows the transformer, only ten times as loud. We have families of squirrels that live happily and unmolested in our neighborhood. They feast on the pecans that would have made us pies. We begrudgingly concede the pecans to them. We wish them gone, but none of us are willing to handle pellet guns to dispose of them. We warily coexist with the squirrels because even though there are plenty of people around who eat squirrels, nobody in our neighborhood wants to fry up the rat-like creatures.
We count on the utility poles to dispose of a few of them for us, and live with the rest.
My neighbor, Kiki, of the ling golden locks came by in her SUV. She had been in the process of drying her hair when the explosion occurred. She was going to her brother’s house down the road to finish the job. She pulled up by the porch so wee could discuss the explosion. WE discussed the nuisance of the squirrels. I continued to drink my tea. I had already called the power company to come and take care of the lights. Kiki came back in just a minute. She said “It’s not a squirrel that got in the transformer. It was one of our two turkeys. The explosion blew him up. It’s not a pretty sight.” She said she was going to get her brother to dispose of the turkey.
In the meantime, the lineman from the power company came. I heard him around back just working away. Since I am not very mechanical, I didn’t go around there. In a little while he came around to the front porch where I was. He said “I need your help.” I found that very surprising because we have already established that I am not mechanical. He said “I need a witness. In all my 26 years of this kind of work, I have never seen a turkey blow a transformer”. That is why turkeys shouldn’t live in town. Their natural instincts are not equipped to deal with obstacles like power poles. It looked like a good roost to him.
I had hoped to get a picture of the pair of strutting turkeys to share with you. I chose not to record the mangled turkey that was the result of the encounter with the utility pole. It was not a pretty sight. None of us have seen his strutting partner since the accident. One of the birds went to turkey heaven and the other back to the woods. Alas, I was not quick enough to get the perfect nature shot of the two cavorting turkeys to share with you. I doubt I’ll ever have the opportunity again. AS I said, there is a reason turkeys do not live in town!