I hate to put anyone off their feed for Thanksgiving, but it seems the right time to share the heartwarming tale of a wild turkey family of seven that lives in our neighborhood.  Warning:  Baby turkey videos ahead that may melt your heart!

We live in a city best known for its rampant crime, medical marijuana clinics and insanely high housing prices, but it’s also home to glorious regional parks full of redwoods, pines, creeks, ferns, flowers and all kinds of wild critters, including deer, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, skunks, possum, rabbits, owls, hawks, falcons and no doubt some mountain lions (although fortunately none have been spotted in many years).  They also harbor the non-native but persistent wild turkey.  

We live right on the border of such a park, and so coyotes run down the middle of our street at midnight, deer crash around below our bedroom window at night eating leaves off our trees, hawks and falcons circle and cry as they hunt in daylight, owls hoo-hoo in the dark while hiding from sight, and don’t even get me started on the raccoons, which have been known to shinny up the supports of our deck just to see what we might have up there.  

But perhaps most fun of all, every year a turkey couple raises a family of offspring, shepherding them around watchfully for months as they grow from wee fuzzy cheepers to waddling birds as large as their parents.  This year’s couple was especially prolific, having five babies -- more than we’ve ever seen before.

  With the babies still fairly young, the whole family comes upon some deer in our backyard.  After a little apprehension, everyone decides everyone else is harmless.

From early summer until late fall, the turkeys walk through our yard, stirring up bugs in their patented scratch-and-pick fashion, the parents enclosing the kids like parentheses, one at each end to watch for danger in any form, be it a dog or car or simply the baby’s own distracted wanderings away from the flock. 

The parents shepherd their cheeping flock up the stairs and then the hill.  You'll hear our cat ask me about them. (She's scared of the adults and stays well away from them.)

They keep in constant communication with each other by a whole variety of noises from cheeps, pops, clicks and trills to, yes, gobbles. After months of near-daily exposure, I can hear the turkeys when they’re half a block away and decode their sounds to know whether they’re content and grazing or distressed and under threat or have become separated and are trying to locate each other with sourcing sounds. Which is not to say they don't have family disputes:

One of the parents is especially fiercely protective – we assume it’s the father.  He chases people who get too close to his family, honking and threatening to bite until the offender is well away.  One day he followed K. all the way across the street to give him a good talking to just for walking too close to his family on the park trail.

Yes, like the proverbial chicken, the turkeys do cross the road, which is a winding and woodsy but busy street that many people use.  When we hear the squeal of brakes and yelling, we know the turkey family is crossing the road and some driver is trying to encourage them to move it along – they never seem to be in any hurry.

 The "babies" in teenage mode, hanging out and cruising.

I can also tell you that, WKRP to the contrary, wild turkeys can and do fly.  As the babies have grown, they’ve developed the ability to fly not only as high as our roof but hundreds of feet up into the tall pines around our house.  When threatened (usually because someone is walking their dog off-leash and the dog does what comes naturally and gives chase), the turkeys scatter, each flying up to a safe perch.  From there, they will issue distress calls to each other until it’s safe to re-group on the ground.

After one such recent incident, I was startled to find one of the “babies” perched on a chair on our deck, making small cries until his parents up on the road got close enough to hear him and answer, at which point he eagerly flapped and waddled away to join them. (Which was a great relief, as I was wondering if we'd have to adopt and finish raising him, and I knew our cat would object to that....)

Lost "baby" turkey perched on deck chair right outside our living room.

I can also tell you that turkeys are great parents.  Amazingly, they kept all their babies alive until just recently.  Sadly, a month ago, one of the nearly full-grown kids disappeared – we don’t know if it was lost to coyote, dog, car or something else.  (We even wondered if some neighbor decided an organic, free range turkey sounded good for Thanksgiving.)  The four remaining children are so large now that it’s hard to tell them apart from their parents, but the family remains as close as ever, and the parents still bring up front and rear when they’re on the move.

Within the next couple months, the turkeys will disappear as they do each year – to where, we don’t know.  They must have some wintering spot.  Next year, we’ll be happy when turkeys return to the neighborhood – perhaps these same children, as they take their turn at mating and raising young – and be thrilled to watch the cycle of life begin all over again.