Visitors

Only a few days after I returned from India, I was greeted in the garden by seven ladies in shiny black bombazine, jackets rucked and ruffled, above a narrow skirt, brown, black and a yellowish tan in geometric patterns like the back of a painted turtle. These are lady turkeys. Some come in shyly, heads hovering over the ground as they pick, pick, pick at the ground, but others stalk by, tiny red heads on long snaky necks held high, striding arrogantly. Sometimes my ladies seem to be striding, but just as often they are moving delicately on tiptoes over stick legs, ridiculously tall stick like legs. How can those extended chopsticks hold that heavy frame? From the upstairs window I cannot see the legs, nor the head when Ms. turkey is in “checking the ground mode” and the resemblance to a turtle, all rounded spattered shell without legs or head is even more pronounced.

Occasionally my ladies come with their escort: two tom turkeys and what a sight they are! Strutting, displaying their tail feathers and carrying on, they are very full of themselves and jealous of any challenge. When they sense an affront, they begin to swell like a balloon slowly filling; the head comes up and the white on the face swells to present the appearance of a Kabuki Dancers in white face, with floppy red wattles. Then wiggle enticingly, showing off each magnificent feather, saying “Look at me! Look at me!” Who could not?

The turkeys gladden my heart: their purposefulness, their adaptability, their extraordinary shape. coloration, designs. All their component parts, beautiful or ridiculous, are adaptations to the environment, except perhaps the wattles and the black neck tie. But perhaps those accoutrements, so ugly to my eyes, are also useful if they attract the attention of a hen turkey. Surely beauty, in the eye of the right beholder, is just as useful even if it is a twisty red neck?

Turkeys are clearly cousins to the peacocks I have just left behind, not so elegant, not so colorful, not so domesticated. Turkeys gobble, peacocks shriek. Neither flies with grace nor speed, but they do get around. Through the woods and fields around the house my turkeys come and go as they wish. I hope that today what goes around, comes around.