On the year of my twelfth Thanksgiving I lived the rural life on a large and wild chunk of property in the Sierra foothills. We lived atop a huge meadow which was completely surrounded by mixed conifer forest. Our ranch lay at the end of a two-mile patchwork of forest service, logging, and private dirt roads which, for wiser folk, were mostly suitable for off-road vehicles. During the dry months, this winding dirt road was accessible enough for us, although it very effectively kept the casual and even the persistent interloper at bay. In all our years there I don’t recall a single time that anyone came in unannounced. Except now that I think of it, that was probably due more to the forest service gate and our two ranch gates that had to be negotiated first. In any case, my home was remote and secluded and wonderful in every way. However, every wet season, which often became a moderate-amount-of-snow season, even the most agile 4-wheel drive just couldn’t manage the old dirt road.
Our nearest neighbors, real ranchers who have actual roads and raise actual angus beef, are a couple of miles away as the crow flies. There’s an abandoned road at the rear of our property, about two miles worth, that ends up at the back of our neighbors property. Because the road is steep and rocky, it better sheds the rain and offers some traction in contrast to the slick, gummy mire of the front road. This back road is barely passable with a quad but it IS passable. Barely. During the muddy/snowy times, we’d park our truck by our neighbors barn and drive the quad up that crazy back road to home.
One particularly frosty morning, sees us readying the quad to leave our ranch. With mom driving and me riding shotgun, we quad down the back road to the first pasture, manage the gate, and enter the first cow pasture. As we head across the pasture it takes ninja concentration to avoid the cow patties while simultaneously taking care to not upset the momma cows. There’s a second gate and while traversing the subsequent grassy expanse we come across a well-fed flock of turkeys: a combination of hens, jakes, and a large tom, all placidly foraging. Mom slows the quad so to minimize our intrusion and the flock parts just enough to let us idle through.
The big tom, probably one of the largest I’ve ever seen, takes a step back and fans his tail. He’s about ten feet from us and for the first time I can see the real beauty of this bird: his feathers aren’t just black. They’re jet black, bronze and brown, with cream and gray and russet, dashed with iridescent hints of green. His featherless head starts out white and gray, with blue and lavender around the eyes, then migrates from pink to bright red at the wattle. What a beauty. My admiration grows as he takes a few steps towards us, drops and spreads his wing feathers, and puffs up his body feathers, quickly doubling his size. I didn’t know you could actually hear the sound of those feathers coming to attention, but you can, even above the sound of a quad engine idle. The tom turns sideways, then frontways, then aggressively glides towards us. If you don’t think a glide can be aggressive you haven’t seen an aggressive tom. My admiration turns to a mild alarm because I realize he’s being protective and territorial.
During all this commotion, the hens continue foraging, either oblivious of or immune to us. Meanwhile “The Tom versus The Mom/Cam/Quad” battle ensues. The tom commences his advance, stretching his neck and gobbling, the fleshy snood above his beak flopping. He increases his speed like a plane on a runway. Mom speeds up because obviously we, with this powerful machine beneath us, can surely outrun a turkey. But no. This guy keeps pace with us and goes airborne, low and fast, aiming for my legs and hopefully not the exhaust pipe because that surely wouldn’t end well. For him anyway.
Mom guns the throttle. We start to pull away but the tom isn’t backing down. When we finally gain some ground I look back over my shoulder and yep, there’s the tom, in full display, chortling, “Take THAT you measly humans. Yeah, go ahead and run, ya big sissies!”
We laughed, partly from relief and partly from the absurdity of being beat by a turkey. We laughed some more and sang “Turkey in the Straw” all the way to the barn.
Here’s the Schnickelfritz Band from 1942 playing, not bluegrass, but an entirely worthy version of “Turkey in the Straw”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnZxfkkoKQ
And the Tennessee Mafia Jug Band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Ntl1uIHVc
And here’s Bill Monroe and Doc Watson just BLAZING it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MriE5wz4NQ
