Monthly Archives: March 2008

Wild turkeys, at least according to hunting magazines, have a reputation for cleverness. They are considered wily prey who are difficult to find and challenging to hunt.

This reputation does not appear to be substantiated by the behavior of the wild turkeys in our neighborhood. Admittedly, these are urbanized turkeys, so maybe they can’t exactly be described as “wild.” Perhaps their once-keen minds have been dulled by soft living among people who are more likely to feed them than hunt them. Or perhaps those minds never were all that keen to begin with, and the wild turkey’s reputation has been exaggerated.

I tend to favor the latter theory. In part this conclusion is based simply on comparing the size of a turkey’s head—and therefore the presumed size of its brain—with the size of its body. In part it is based on observing the behavior of the turkeys that hang out in the neighborhood.

Yesterday, for example, as I was working in the kitchen, I noticed a single hen out in the back yard. She appeared to have strayed away from the flock. Or maybe the others had conspired to leave her behind in some fowl form of a middle-school prank. Whatever the reason, she seemed lost. She stayed in one small area of the yard for the length of time it took me to wash the dishes and clean off the counters. She would take a few tentative, high-stepping paces in one direction, then retreat to her original position, then make a small circle, then stand still for a few minutes, then look all around and start pacing again.

About half an hour later, I spotted her in the front yard. She still appeared to be fretting. If she had hands, she would have been wringing them. By that time I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. I just hope the rest of the flock came back and found her, because she certainly didn’t seem likely to ever find them.

Then there are the birds, caught trotting along the road, who respond to an approaching car by staying in the middle of the road and trying to outrun it. Of course, my opinion of such a bird’s intelligence may well be prejudiced by the fact that a trotting turkey, seen from behind, is one of the most ridiculous and undignified sights nature has to offer.

I’ve never hunted turkeys, so maybe the truly wild ones are a lot smarter than I’ve given them credit for. Or maybe it’s just that hunters have a different perspective than I do.

There is, after all, the story I heard during last spring’s turkey hunting season. It rained heavily for two days—washing out roads, flooding creeks that are usually dry, and turning fields and pastures into bogs. On the second day, a turkey hunter ended up stranded on a small island in a creek whose normal trickle of water had risen into a flood. He spent most of the day there, sodden and cold, until someone finally hauled a boat in and rescued him.

For all his soggy struggles, he didn’t end up with a turkey. The birds, wily or not, at least had enough sense to settle in somewhere out of the rain.

“Everybody collects something.”

At least, this was the belief of the man across the table at a recent dinner we attended. He had been talking about the various things he has collected over the years. Then he went on to ask the rest of us, “What do you collect?”

Since this was a geology gathering, the obvious answer for several people was “rocks.” Oddly enough, the answer usually came from the spouses, not the geologists. Evidently geologists don’t admit to collecting rocks; they claim to acquire rocks for purposes of research. Never mind that, to a non-geologist, the difference between the two is not readily apparent.

Other people at the table talked about collecting coins, stamps, glassware, books, and marbles. Handy, I suppose; you would always have a few extras in case you lost yours. One might collect stuffed animals, either the toy kind or the I-shot-it-myself kind. A few women (Elizabeth Taylor comes to mind) appear to collect ex-husbands.

I know a woman who collects frogs. Well, not actual frog frogs; stuff with frogs on it and stuff shaped like frogs. Some church historian somewhere probably collects collection plates. My grandkids collect Pokemon cards, especially the oldest one, who has hundreds of them and is frighteningly knowledgeable about them and will probably use them to finance his college education.

When the conversation came around to me, I couldn’t think of anything I collect. Not purposely, anyway. To a disinterested observer glancing at my desk, I suppose it might appear as if I collect paper. Anyone looking more closely in various parts of the house might guess that I collect cobwebs, or maybe dust bunnies. (At least collecting dust bunnies isn’t quite the same as collecting dust.)

Honestly, though, I try not to collect things just for the sake of having them. It can get out of hand way too fast. You buy some cute little thing that has picture of a teddy bear or a cactus or a rhinoceros on it, and then you get a second one because it goes with the first one, and before you know it people are giving you the stuff as gifts, and bingo, you end up with cacti or rhinoceri all over the house, and you have to build on another room.

So I don’t necessarily agree that everybody collects something. But the man across the table, to the couple of us who claimed not to collect anything, asked a further question: “What is it you have that you always want another one of?”

Well, when he put it that way, I could say that I collect stories. That’s what I always want another of. That’s what interests me the most. Any time I read an odd item in the paper, or hear about some dramatic event, or learn some random bit of trivia, I always want to know the story behind it. Who did it? Why? What happened before that? What happened after that? There’s always a story, even if I have to make it up myself.

Stories. That’s what I collect. Each one is unique, there’s always room for one more, and they never have to be dusted.