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Turkeys. I was going to say something about turkeys, but I find I don't know what I want to say about them. They've been coming around every day lately, in a family group of about twenty.
Twenty turkeys in my yard.
E I E I O.
They've been dropping by either early in the morning or late in the afternoon, leading me to believe that I was at one end of their regular rounds. They always go off in the same direction, beyond the old oak and toward the grove of trees to the south. I could have set my clocks by their schedule (which might come in handy, what with the unreliability of the clocks in this house lately).
Today they came racing through the yard at noon. I mean, they were in such a hurry to get from one end of the yard to the other that they flapped and flew part of the way. They looked like big, clumsy roadrunners (as I imagine them, having never seen one except in nature documentaries and cartoons).
Four members of the flock got separated from the rest and found themselves on the wrong side of the fence. At first they had no idea how to get out of the yard and catch up with the others. They dashed back and forth and gobbled in befuddled consternation. I even thought about going out and helping them, but I doubted they'd appreciate it.
Then one of them took the lead and flew up to the top of a fence post. He was facing the wrong way, but after standing there for a few minutes "thinking" (or whatever it is turkeys do that passes for thinking), he hopped down and wandered around until he was headed in the customary southerly direction, where he could hope to meet up with his sisters and his cousins and his aunts.
As soon as they saw him hop the wire fence, the other three trapped in my yard decided they needed to follow. The largest of them flew all the way over in one comical lunge. The other two were much smaller. One squeezed between the wires, and the other tried to follow. After several false starts (and possibly a few scratches and bruises), this one made it through as well.
The end. | 
