Escapee Turkeys

We have quite a menagerie of animals of varying shapes and sizes at Newhouse Farm: pigs, geese, ducks, hens, dogs, and even a three-legged cat. Each type of animal has it's own unique set of characteristics, and this is certainly true of the most recent addition to the farm, the turkeys. We bought a dozen turkeys at the end of July in order that we could fatten them up for Christmas. When they arrived the turkeys were scrawny, vulnerable looking creatures, but now they're fully grown and are covered in glossy black feathers that have truncated tips. The male turkeys show off by puffing up their feathers so that they all stand on end, their wings dipped so that the tips touch the ground, flicking their tails from side to side like a flamenco dancer. In this inflated pose they glide along amongst the oblivious females, and this strange sight always makes me think they look like a fleet of magnificent black-sailed galleons.

The turkeys have also become the farm's greatest escape artists. Not a day goes by now without some, if not all of them, breaking out of their enclosure as if they're trying to escape from Fort Knox. Their great escapes generally take place first thing in the morning after I've let them out of their enclosure, or last thing at night as I'm trying to get them to bed.

In the morning I can tell when the turkeys are on the loose because they emit a very loud and gobbling/warbling sound which sounds exactly as if they're very excited to be doing something they know they oughtn't to be doing. I'm tuned into this sound now, and every time I've heard it I've discovered that the turkeys are on the loose. One day the turkeys were half way up the lane to the village! But the most amusing time this has happened was a couple of mornings ago. At the farm my bedroom has a door that leads directly outside to the gardens, and on this particular morning I was just getting ready to go downstairs for breakfast when I heard the loud gobbling noise right outside my bedroom. I opened the exterior door and who did I see looking up at me but 8 startled turkeys. Whether they'd come to say hello to me or to Nigel the depressed Muscovy duck (who also spends most of his time in the grassy area near my bedroom door) remains unknown!

Despite their mischievous escape tactics I have found the turkeys to be surprisingly obedient once they've actually been caught in the act. They never try to run away from me, instead they obediently walk back towards their enclosure as I shepherd them calmly along. Once near to their enclosure I walk ahead and open up part of the fencing to let them in. Here I try my best 'Pied Piper' tactics by letting rip a strange gobbling sort of sound that I've developed over the past few months to lure them home. It sounds a little bit like I'm impersonating a Native American Indian, and I'm sure if anyone from the village can hear me making these bizarre noises they must think I'm completely barking. But whether I'm crazy or not I don't care because the sound works. The turkeys simply walk sedately back into their enclosure whilst I lure them in with my strange high-pitched gobbling noises, the males always coming in last because they can't resist puffing up their feathers to show off!

In the evening when it's time to put all the animals to bed the turkeys, along with the badly behaved Muscovy ducklings, are invariably the animals who are the most ill behaved. By the time I get to their enclosure most of them tend to have flown up onto the roof of their house where they sit stubbornly in a row. The turkeys' house is about 8 to 9 foot high, and it takes a lot of persuading to get them back down to ground level. My preferred technique is to gently nudge them with a large stick until one by one they flap off. However the turkeys have a cunning defence strategy: they fire poop at me! If I don't keep my wits about me a freshly aimed turkey poop will come rolling down the roof and splat me in the face. And turkey poop really smells - even worse than goose poop - so this would be a particularly unpleasant experience!

If they're not perching on their roof they'll be perching on the aqueduct, which although it's lower down and therefore easier to push the turkeys off, means that I generally get splashed in the face with stream water and God knows what else as the turkeys flap their wings in protest. And the worst case scenario of all was when one of the turkeys decided to perch on the roof of one of the barns. That time I gave up completely and had to call James to help out. To this day I still don't know quite how he got that turkey down from the roof!

Why do the turkeys seem to be determined to escape? Do they know that Christmas is coming? I doubt it! But one thing is for certain: I never realised that a creature most people think of simply as Christmas dinner has so much personality.

NB Saturday 7th November amendment: this morning there was a brief respite in the rain so the turkeys finally had their wings clipped. No more great escape attempts for them!