The Turkey Parade

Buddies come in all shapes and sizes.  Some have fur, some have scales, and some have feathers.  And sometimes, the ones with the feathers come in size XL.  

Take our turkeys, for example.  When we bought our new house, we had a whole family of turkeys that came with the neighborhood--no extra charge!  They provide daily entertainment for us (and the cats) by walking by and in our yard, en masse, on a virtually daily basis.  In the morning, they come walking off the mountain, gobbling and squawking.  In the afternoon, they head back up the mountain, a bit quieter this time.  (Maybe they get tired during the day?)  Here's a sample:

That's just a few of them, but it gives you an idea.  It's hard to tell from the pictures, but these guys are huge.  Bigger than Otto.  Bigger than Reggie, even.  And the crazy thing was, that at first the buddies didn't seem to see them.  It was almost like they didn't have a frame of reference for birds that were bigger than they are, so they just looked right through them.  

Finally, one day Sean had Otto outside (more about Otto's adventures later), and for the first time, Otto actually saw the turkeys.  So he lunged.  And Sean lunged.  Luckily, there was no blood spilled, and all feathers stayed intact.  But Otto finally figured out that here was his favorite mush treat, walking around in the yard as if to provide that extra little bit of challenge that Otto's always looking for.  (As Sean noticed when we had to do an impromptu turkey rescue in our driveway, before we bought the house, turkeys in the wild smell exactly like turkeys in the can.  Weird.)

These turkeys, however, will continue to be the "show" part in the "dinner and a show" combination that I'm sure the cats would appreciate.