Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Reluctant Turkey



I am a turkey, born, or rather, hatched…a freak of nature. Not of choice, mind you, for who has a choice? These things happen. This is my story of Thanksgiving

I hatched in 28 days like the others. But I suspected something was wrong when I heard my family wailing and gnashing their beaks, “What went wrong, mama…have you been tom-turkeying around the barnyard? Is it a rara avis? Let’s name it R. T.

I soon figured out the problem. Turkey poults grow rapidly. I didn’t. All that grew was my neck and my snool, a sporty red beard. While my peers grew large in girth and chest, I grew long in neck, big in head.

I was an anorexic hatchling. Since someone is always to blame for everything, I accused my ancestry, a cross-breed of the Bourbon breed of New Orleans and the Royal Palm sophisticates of South Florida. I’m a living example of a gene gone wild.

Life deals the cards—our role is to play the hand dealt. I drew a bad hand and was a constant embarrassment. I was a nerd from the get-go with a keen sense for survival. Let’s just say nature shorted me on one hand but made up for it on the other.

Being scrawny and bow-legged, I was the playground piñata for every bully and insecure jerk tom who called me names, like “runt, pencil-neck and skinny.” I got no respect. Even the hens fled when I approached, giggling as they ran. My mama escorted me to turkey school, a daily embarrassment.

I wasn’t invited to play the barnyard turkey games. Those were reserved for the NFL wannabe’s. They were the big eaters who hung out in the jock dorm, bragging of their pumped-up pecs and heavy bench presses. The rest of us roosted on a fence.

Being a loner, I observed turkey nature and realized quickly that something was not right in this barnyard. I was always a picky eater, an herb and salad guy, despising the turkey chow. I grew little while the others swelled to prodigious proportions overnight.

Twice a day the feed wagon arrived. Hormone-infused turkey chow was emptied into feeding troughs by burly men with long beards. It put a South Georgia thanksgiving buffet to shame. The men would say, “Now, you birds eat up, ya hear? Thanksgiving’s getting close,” patting their bellies and laughing. I once tasted the cuisine, but it had the aroma of poison.

I was as skinny as a starving monk, but smart. I knew there’s no such thing as a “free lunch,” or free anything. I kept warning this ignorant and gluttonous brood, “Boys and girls, this food isn’t free…there’s a catch.” No one listened.

One fall day a white truck with wire cages entered the barnyard. The bib-overall boys bounded out and opened the gate. Me? I slinked to the back corner of the yard, knowing something evil was about to go down. A beautiful White-breed turkey emerged from a cage, and the jock-toms went stark raving mad. I knew what they had in mind. But it was a trick. This was not an ordinary turkey…this hen had experience, you could tell.

She pranced around the yard, enraging the hens and arousing the toms. Fights ensued, feathers flew in the frenzy as the toms assaulted one another for her attention. The hens bristled. The toms had only one hen in mind now. I crouched further into the shadows of the barn, watching this turmoil and thinking, “This ain’t natural.”

Soon one of the men began to cluck and yelp on a turkey call. The White hen sashayed seductively towards the truck, followed mindlessly in a collective swoon by the food-anesthetized toms. The hens could not tolerate losing their toms to this hussy, so they marched proudly behind them onto the truck with its open, waiting prisons.

I kept quiet, stayed low. I knew all along what she was…a Judas turkey, herding these ignorant birds off to where nothing good would happen. The free feed bag was over…the bill had come due. I felt sorrow for them.

Here I was, abandoned and alone in this big, deserted barnyard. I longed for companionship. There was none. I slept in the empty jock dorm, still smelling of turkey musk, wondering about tomorrow.

Tomorrow came. Feeling safe, I strutted, scratching up what few herbs remained. The white truck pulled up again. The burley men opened the door. Down the shoot came a fresh crop of young Narragansett hens. What’s this, I wondered, sitting on the fence post. They looked around the yard, then at me. What, were they were attracted to R. T.?

Observing the approaching tableau, Roy Orbison began to sing to me, “Pretty women, don’t you on walk on by, pretty women, don’t you make me cry, pretty women, you look lovely as can be, are you lonely just like me?”

Thanksgivings come in many ways. “Here I am, girls, R. T., the barnyard stud.” Now that’s my idea of Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you, and strut proudly in your own barnyard…gobble, gobble. R. T.

Bud Hearn
November 17, 2011

1 comment:

Camdenfamilies said...

Are you a protoge of Hunter S Thompson?