Cold Turkey

My parents tell me that I loved the wild turkeys. That they would have to lift me up to watch them bicker on the backyard fence. That I wouldn't even make a sound. I just watched them frolic about, dancing with the falling leaves, swimming in the crimson and gold. It was a bit much for my innocent four-year-old brain to process. Turkeys were the funny-looking birds that people ate on Thanksgiving. They lived on farms, or else deep in the woods. No one had ever mentioned anything about turkeys flocking in a suburban New Jersey backyard. Like every four-year-old, I had my very own turkey drawing, which derived from a crayon outline of my tiny hand. But now, I was standing mere yards from several real, live turkeys, my pudgy fingers smudging against the cool glass of the kitchen window. And I could hear them. My dimples surfaced as I heard their calls, different from, yet strangely akin to the traditional “gobble gobble” I read about in picture books. I think it was then that I realized how little I really knew about turkeys. How everything I learned had been simplified for me, crudely translated from the original creatures standing before me. Everything about the wild turkeys, from their guttural squawks to their funny little dances, was so alien to me. Those picture books, those turkey-hand drawings, those kindergarten Thanksgiving activities… they couldn't possibly capture the brilliance of the real animal. As their plump little figures hopped the back fence and disappeared into the vibrant autumnal landscape, I waved goodbye. After a while they never resurfaced. That was fourteen years ago, that they visited last. But with each visit they never failed to fascinate me. They never failed to bring livelihood to an autumn afternoon, to remind me that there was so much about the natural world that I had yet to learn. At least, that's what my parents tell me. I wish I remembered them myself.