Turkeys

Where is my camera when I need it?  A group of us were sitting around the table at the Senior Center in San Ramon having a nice discussion of the book, "The Martian" when suddenly people were craning their necks in the direction of the window and one woman had whipped out her cell phone to snap photos.

There were about half a dozen wild turkeys peeking up over the window sill to look into the room.  The room looks out on a small concrete patio which ends at a wall and behind it is a weed covered hill.  The turkeys had come down the hill to check out the patio.  

My camera was in my purse on the floor by the wall, with three people in chairs between me and it, so I had no chance to dive for it.

Last month while we were discussing another book, we saw a mother deer and her adolescent fawn.  I felt so bad for them since they were obviously looking for food (like the turkeys) but it was slim pickings.  I can hardly wait to see what other wildlife will visit our book discussion group!

Seeing turkeys everywhere seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon.  The first time I noticed wild turkeys in Davis was a couple of years after an infamous battle at the cemetery between the people who wanted to continue to use a hidden area behind the grave area as a dog run, and those who objected to dogs walking  through the cemetery to get to the run.  I was one who argued for keeping the dog run and said that my kids would be happy to know that dogs had come to visit them.  Others felt that having a dog possibly pee in the area of their loved one's grave was a desecration.

After the ban was put into place and the dog run closed, we discovered that one advantage of having dogs in the area was that they kept down the population of wild turkeys.  Now it seemed, the turkeys had taken over the place as their nesting area.  It was common to drive by the neighborhood of the cemetery and find turkeys strolling around the homes or sunning themselves in someone's driveway.

We live a couple of miles from the cemetery, but the turkeys have even made it into our neighborhood.  Walt found a bunch of them sitting on our roof one day.  

They are almost always wandering around the cemetery and they are nasty buggers too.  You don't want to get too close for fear of being attacked.  They have become as ubiquitous as Canada geese, who used to migrate, but lately seem to just stay and stay.

I wonder how those folks who argued for closing the dog run feel about turkey poop on their loved ones' grave!  You can't ban turkeys...they don't comply with the rules.

It was a full yesterday.  This was the first time we had a vehicle conflict on my book club day.  I was going to San Ramon to go to the book club with Charlotte and Walt had a dentist appointment in Berkeley.  He usually takes the car down to Berkeley and spends the day there, but that was going to be difficult.  But his appointment was fairly early, so I just drove him to Berkeley and then drove on to Char's house on the other side of the Berkeley hills.

The discussion of the book was fun and it was interesting to see how many of those >50 year old women would, if given the chance, like to travel to Mars.  The woman next to me, however, said she would wait until someone else had already developed it and I told her it sounded like she was waiting for the Mars Hilton.  

When the discussion was over, we went back to Char's house and I waited for Walt to call me letting me know he was on the BART train headed for Walnut Creek, where I was to meet him in the parking lot of Target.  Turns out that was fortuitous since traffic was horrendous and by getting off the freeway early and driving through town I missed the huge mess where the freeways merge.

I let Walt drive the rest of the way home while we listened to our audio book ("The Enemy" by Lee Child).  We had only 2 hours left in the book, so didn't finish it, but on our next trip we will.

We're old people and were both exhausted from our respective days when we got home, Walt fixed himself a tiny dinner and I skipped dinner entirely.