lurkeyMy grandmother always used to call turkey "turkey lurkey". Somehow I thought everyone did.  Well anyway the image of a lurking turkey has always amused me so I decided to write just a little bit about it.

The audio & text are more or less the same for the rest of this post. Maybe listening to the audio is more fun,

With Thanksgiving approaching I can think of course of only one thing - turkey!
 
This pre- Thanksgiving time, each year, is the time when turkeys everywhere are fed well.  They are primped and pampered, pinched and leered at.  Their necks are measured, as are their waists.
 
 
Now, if one was an intelligent turkey, one might wonder, why all this sudden, undue attention.  Why, all year has gone by, and you were just another bird on the farm.  Now, all of a sudden, you have every eye on you. And such strange looks! Some of them almost seem -- scary!  Why, yes, a little creepy indeed. Perhaps it is the staring, unblinking attention.  As if the watcher were dreaming of some fantasy scene with you a part of it.  Perhaps it is the rubbing of bellies while you are stared at or the rhythmic motion, unconscious certainly, of the jaw as if in anticipation of action, or the thin bead of drool sneaking out of the corner of the mouth.
 
It could have been any of these or a dozen other forebodings, but certainly, an intelligent turkey would see the signs.  Why yes. Somebody was keeping a secret and they were keeping it from you!
 
Now the turkey is not by nature a sneaky or suspicious animal.  No, not a fox or a squirrel or an opossum to go slinking about in shadows. It is not even of average stealthiness.  It is large and fat and slow and obvious.  When it tries to fly, it may fail, and almost comically fall back to earth.  To be a turkey, and good at espionage, one would have to be inventive, innovative.
 
Near the house, there was a stand of high grass, with sticks and branches the height and thickness of a turkey's neck. Some of the clumps of grass and leaves were almost the color and thickness of a turkey's body.  And, best, from the grass, a view of several of the houses' windows and the kitchen door.  A turkey sitting motionless in the high grass might never be noticed.  And turkeys were good at sitting around doing nothing.  Such a turkey might go unnoticed for days.  And in those days the turkey might overhear something, spoken too loudly near an open window.  It might see something, done too close to an open kitchen door. Such a turkey -- such a lurking turkey, might learn secrets! It might learn the secret that was being kept from it. Certainly if it was patient it would!
 
So the turkey began to lurk.

--- continued in next post ---