Early this past spring I made a blog post lamenting a depression hanging on as tenaciously as the cold of winter. My depression evaporated when I happened upon twelve turkey hens and a tom grazing in a patch of winter rye or possibly chickweed. It caused a revival in my spirits. This morning, as I set off for a run, the cold and wet spring, along with my depression, were far from my mind. I don’t have time to be depressed as the tropical rainforest portion of our summer is upon us. Many of us have been enduring a severe drought and while it has been drier than usual in our little bit of heaven, any drought conditions apparently came to an end with the tropical like thunderstorms appearing in the late evenings for the last five days. Mimicking their first cousins found around the equator they have been torrential and loud on our metal roof. Just ask our weather puppy, Tilly.

My “over producing” garden, Linda Gail’s backyard which resembles a…jungle of ferns, milkweed and morning glories, a tractor that runs only when the spirit moves it, along with optimum kudzu growing conditions will keep me busy for the foreseeable future…so I haven’t been thinking about MY turkeys at all. I know they are not mine but I tend to think of them as if they were. I am willing to share them with the world…unless you are a hunter.

I had not seen MY turkeys for a while. I wasn’t concerned…it is THAT time of the year. I don’t see a lot of MY birds of any variety this time of year. A few come to my feeders but most have abandoned me to the squirrels who never seem to leave. MY birds are busy raising their young. Feeding and teaching, the same activities we humans must see to although the feeding of our off springs shouldn’t involve worms and insects. These child “rearing” activities were evident when a mother hawk used a small open space behind our house to teach her offspring the nuances of hunting field mice…a practice I quite approve of. It was also evident this morning when I ran up upon MY twelve turkey hens and their off springs. There must have been thirty of them. The wide drive was black with them…or brown with them. In the blink of an eye the poults and their mothers had scattered leaving me to wonder momentarily if I had actually seen them or was I having a hallucination caused from my oxygen starved brain. I did not see the tom but I am sure he was around resting, having enjoyed the “fruits of his labor.”

My already high spirits soared even higher just seeing them. I couldn’t wait to tell Linda Gail…but being two miles from home I would have to. Thirty minutes later I was rewarded with the smile I knew my story would evoke…and I didn’t even have to embellish it.

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