For The Birds

Steve-O emailed me this vaguely apocalyptic article about wild turkeys invading the Bahston suburbs and (apparently) panicking the good citizens:

BROOKLINE - On a recent afternoon, Kettly Jean-Felix parked her car on Beacon Street in Brookline, fed the parking meter, wheeled around to go to the optician and came face to face with a wild turkey.

The turkey eyed Jean-Felix. Jean-Felix eyed the turkey. It gobbled. She gasped. Then the turkey proceeded to follow the Dorchester woman over the Green Line train tracks, across the street, through traffic, and all the way down the block, pecking at her backside as she went.

"This is so scary," Jean-Felix said, finally taking refuge inside Cambridge Eye Doctors in Brookline's bustling Washington Square. "I cannot explain it."

Uh, folks? It's just over a month until Thanksgiving. What the hell is the matter with you that you can't do the math on this one? That's dinner strutting its stuff out there!

I know of what I speak, by the way.

[WARNING: SQUEEM ALERT. PETA MEMBERS SHOULD READ NO FURTHER.]

My very first game was a big wild tom that I shot in the Texas Hill Country when I was eight. I was using a little Remington .222 and the shot was, if memory serves, something in the range of 50 or 60 yards (we were in a deer blind working a feeder). Much of my childhood memory has faded over the years, but I still distinctly recollect how proud of myself I was when I came home to show Mom the blood Dad had smeared on my cheeks in honor of the occasion.

It was too late in the year to have my bird for Thanksgiving, so we had it for Christmas dinner instead. Wild turkey, as is usually the case with game, is considerably stronger than the domestic variety, however much you brine it. My other memory of the event was our sitting at the table in the dining room, all decked out in our Christmas finery, and Dad, who had started to carve the bird, exclaiming, "Oh, here's where the bullet struck!" Of course, all of us - my brother, sister and I - wanted to have a look.

Somehow, I don't think such things would go over very well at Orgle Manor, but then we lived in a different time and place. And while I grew up hunting deer, turkey, dove, quail and duck, I must say I've never had any particular urge either to keep it up or to pass it on to the Llama-ettes.