Readers may recall a previous post where a turkey held me hostage in my car for about half an hour.
While taking a walk a couple of days ago, I saw a turkey standing guard over someone else’s car and then chasing yet another car down the road. Whether this was the same turkey that held me captive I do not know, since we were never properly introduced the first time around.
I then saw another resident approach her car where another turkey was lurking. I watched from a distance for about ten minutes as she, after getting into the car and starting it, could not drive away immediately because the turkey kept hanging around the car, walking around it, and even seeming to peck at it or maybe it was getting up close to it to see its reflection. The driver clearly did not want to risk driving over the turkey and so could barely move. She would inch the car backwards and the turkey would follow. This went on for about ten minutes, until she was sure that she could go without hitting it and then she drove off, with the turkey in hot pursuit.
So I think that my encounter with the turkey was not due to any personal animosity towards me but instead that the neighborhood turkeys are on some kind of mission to harass cars in general. It means that the turkey who held me hostage is not likely to be rounding up a posse and planning a surprise attack on me personally.
But it could be that the previous one was a time-traveling robot, who was sent back to kill you before you could save humanity, in the ensuing post-apocalyptic war after a nuclear holocaust caused by a malevolent AI network (which was, unfortunately, the inevitable result of your own failure to completely destroy the turkey/robot in question). And what you might have just seen is another possible turkey/robot, which was sent back by the human resistance in order to combat a third and as yet unseen time-traveling turkey/robot. And that one, like the first, is also bent on your destruction.
No way to rule that out.
Turkeys can be very aggressive this time of year. I binge watched turkey attack videos on youtube once. I saw a farmer mention that to deal with aggressive roosters they hold them down with their head on the ground for 15 seconds like another rooster would. It’s not a small bird though and sometimes more than one will do it together.
Yep. This sounds like almost all the turkeys I have known. So yes, nothing personal. On the other hand, it does make them easy to catch.
Tomorrow I have to go help a neighbor who owns a very mean goose. I’m going to catch him and transport him elsewhere to a new farm, as his owner is too ill to deal with him. It will be no problem to catch him, as, like these turkeys, he won’t be afraid to walk right up to me. I will bring a net but highly doubt I’ll need it. I’ll probably be able to just pick him up. Silly things.
Exactly 99 years ago, Flora Annie Steel tried to warn us about Turkey Lurkey! Why didn’t we listen??!?
It’s attempting to dominate its reflection!
Comment 1 clearly has the correct explanation 🙂
The turkey has been cast as the villain in this saga to divert attention away from the real villain — not Mano, albeit he certainly bears watching (and may even have bears watching him) — but the cars. A malevolent life-form only known for the past 100+ years, slowly, insidiously, worming its way into everyone else’s life (not just humans, turkeys, and Mano, but pretty much everything), consuming oxygen and liquefied dinosaur, producing toxic gases and demanding a massive, largely toxic or destructive infrastructure, which is willingly created by the now-enslaved humans.
The brave turkey resistance is fighting back, trying — like the dolphins before them (“so long and thanks for all the fish!”), like the eroded and defiled lands, like the suddenly-extinct lifeforms, like the slick-encrusted beaches and oceans and (burning) rivers and lands — to free the humans, to get them to revolt against their mechanized masters.
“the neighborhood turkeys are on some kind of mission to harass cars in general”
A very noble mission indeed -- from now on I cheer for them.
@kestrel #3:
I saw someone do that with an aggressive rooster once, and it was like magic. When she let go of the rooster after 15-20 seconds, he stayed laying on the ground, blinking occasionally, as if to say “What happened?”
Oops, that was for brony at #2.
@Numenaster 9
It was pretty impressive. There’s an abstract risk of the turkeys role-modeling the behavior and it spreading (hence the ganging up). Corvids can hold personal grudges and role-model them.
I have caught geese for fun but I understand if it’s startling to anyone who not tried to subdue a larger bird without damage. Maybe some bored people can be convinced to go dominate turkeys in their spare time?
Relatedly over the holidays I was binging on videos of bird brooding behavior and realized I was fascinated with brooding while brooding.
Brony, beware the recursive brood.