Clark, the Turkey Whisperer

Or, how my husband rescued a live mama turkey using a plastic lawn chair and his own wits. But mostly the chair.

Let me tell you about my husband, Clark, and the turkey. Yes - the turkey. This happened a couple of years ago.

(turkeys on the other side of my office, roaming OUTSIDE the fenced area at my home)

We live in the woods (though, oddly enough, only a 5 minute drive to Five Guys burgers and Chipotle, so we’re not THAT rural lol). We had just moved to a place with a fenced-in area that I’ve warned my husband to always keep gated closed.

He left the gate open.

A giant turkey got in.

Now, if you know anything about turkeys, you know they are tasty but really not all there in the brain cell department. This turkey couldn’t figure out how to find its way back to the open gate. How did I know? It started gobbling bloody murder.

Right next to my office window.

I was on a big writing deadline at the time (writing my Do-Over series book, Perky), so a freaked-out turkey next to my office window was NOT conducive to getting work done.

I go to Clark and calmly, patiently explain that HE LEFT THE GATE OPEN AND I WARNED HIM AND NOW OMG OMG WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO.

So we quickly realize why the turkey is freaking out. She’s a mama. And her babies are on the other side of the chainlink fence. Four turkey babies, running back and forth, while mama’s stuck inside the enclosure.

And too stupid to find her way back to the open gate on the other side, away from her babies.

Clark goes outside and picks up a white plastic yard chair. You know the kind, right? And walks down the steps to where the turkey is, holding the… plastic, lightweight chair… in front of him.

“What are you doing?” I shouted. I expected him to grab a broom, or something with a long stick. But a cheap white plastic chair?

“Shhhh.”

He walks up slowly. It starts to panic. He stops.

“I’m going to put the chair as close as I can to the turkey so she can jump on it and fly over the fence,” he explains.

People.

People.

This is why women live longer than men.

Clark moves closer. The turkey panics. The little turkey babies start coming back on her side of the fence, but she’s trapped with a chair-wielding predator. This turkey is a mama turkey and in her little pea-brain mind, my husband is The Enemy.

I am rapidly identifying with the turkey.

“This isn’t going to work!” I shout. I’m having visions of how I will explain to the emergency room doctor why my husband has turkey claw marks on his body and what the strange chair-back bruise across his chest is and how to make it clear that this wasn’t some bedroom thing gone horribly wrong.

Then I tucked that idea away for a future book.

Hey. Don’t judge me.

“She has more brain cells than a dinosaur!” he calls back, moving closer.

I have no idea what the heck that is supposed to mean.

Finally, the turkey proves that maybe, just maybe, she has more brain cells than either of us suspected, because she flaps her wings and leaps in one big, majestic lunge, landing on the top of the fence, and dropping down on the other side to join her babies.

Clark puts down the chair. He turns and looks at me with a victorious grin.

I half expected him to be wearing blue face paint and shouting “FREEDOM!”

And then without a word, he closed the gate.

Hasn’t left it open since.

:)

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That happened in 2018.

This story may, or may not, have parts of it woven a later book,  Shopping for a Turkey . Sometimes I wonder if I’m really writing fiction. <3

Do you have any crazy “animal somewhere it shouldn’t be” stories? Comment and tell me one. I’m always ready for something funny.

Someday I’ll tell you about the time we freed a baby raccoon from a gutter downspout. We’re still alive, so you know how it ends…