I really need to get a camera so that I can provide many, many, many turkey pictures. Who knew that turkeys were so interesting? Such odd, idiosyncratic creatures? I stand by my theory that turkeys occupy a separate but overlapping reality (it explains so much). What we in our reality interpret as bizarre, inexplicable, and kind of moronic turkey behavior makes perfect sense in the context of this parallel turkey universe.
Case in point: Airplanes. The other birds and mammals quickly figure out that not only are airplanes no threat, they are also boring. Not so much the turkeys. How long have these turkeys been here? How old are these turkeys? Long and old enough! And yet every single time a plane flies overhead they tilt their heads anxiously to the side, gaze skyward and commence with the stressful turkey noises. Sitting out there with them in the sizzling Texas dusk, Bud Light Lime in hand, faithful canine-identified companion Fraction beneath my camp chair, I'm all, "It's an airplane. Just an airplane." While the five turkeys are all, "HAWK! It's a hawk! Hawk-hawk-hawk! It's a hawk!" I go, "No. It's an airplane. Airplane, airplane, airplane. We've been over this. Airplane." The turkeys stare up into the sky, big round eyes even bigger and rounder in worry. "Hawk! Hawk! Oh, it's a hawk! Oh, it's going to get us!" Fraction sighs. The chickens ignore the whole drama. The geese sneer and roll their eyes. The goats hope that it is a hawk and that it really will get the turkeys, the chickens, and especially the geese. "Airplane, airplane, airplane," I intone, as the White Holland hen turkey Lemon Drop launches herself towards my lap, convinced that I'll guard her huge, flapping, scrabbling taloned self against the terrifying airborne threat. But see, while this turkey behavior appears from the context of my own reality and universe to be silly and possibly insane, from the position of the turkeys' parallel reality and/or universe it makes perfect sense. Because there really is a huge, horrifying, turkey-hungry hawk up there cruising over my acreage. What I see as a simple airplane, what the dogs and cats and goats, geese, and chickens see clearly as merely an airplane, is actually an immense and voracious avian predator perfectly capable of swooping into this overlapping dimension and grabbing a poor turkey. What the turkeys don't understand is why the rest of us don't realize this.
It must be hard occupying a parallel and slightly overlapping reality. It must feel as though no one understands your perspective, your position and viewpoint. It must feel as though you are constantly the Other, constantly the pariah, the outcast, the inferiorized Them to the binary Us. And what does dominant society always do to this inferiorized, stigmatized Other? The turkeys know, they know too well. Especially in November.