Birds of a Feather

When we lived outside of Seattle, we had these huge trees in our backyard.  One of them housed an owl and I loved listening to it hoot at night.  We also had a woodpecker and I loved it too because it sounded EXACTLY like woody woodpecker.  Without the laughing, cause that would have been just weird.  Anyway I loved listening to the rat-a-tat-tat, until the day it decided to peck on our chimney sending horrendously loud echo-ey metalic-ey rat-a-tat-tats all through the house until I went outside and threw a basketball at it.  Oh fine, call the Audubon Society, whatever.  If that fucker had woken up the babies, I'd have thrown more than a basketball.  I'd have thrown bird shot or a cat.

Then we moved outside of Phoenix and I missed my owl and woodpecker until all these new birds came down for the winter.  Storks, herons, ibises, egrets...  All these awesome water birds frolicking in our man made lakes and fountains and waterfalls.  I guess the chlorine didn't bother them. Or it did but we won't find out for a few more decades.

Then we moved to Northern California and more cool birds!  Eagles, falcons, quail, stupid doves that manage to breed too much, and turkeys.  Wild turkeys.  Roaming the suburbs in turkey packs, rooting in lawns and scaring dogs. We've been here almost 3 years and we will still run to the window to watch them.  They're so funny looking.  And they're big. That huge butterball in the supermarket? That was once walking around, stopping traffic.  And they do stop traffic.  You can always tell a newcomer because they'll honk at them.   I did too.  But honking at a turkey does nothing.  It  will turn towards you and do it's best Robert De Niro, "You talkin' to me?  You talkin' to ME??" And it knows you're not going to hit it because you'd be picking turkey bits out of your grill for a month.  Who needs that hassle?   So you drive around it.  That's right, you drive around the bird.  Bet you've never done that.  Unless you live on an ostrich farm.

If you don't believe dinosaurs evolved into birds, you've never seen the turkeys running through the long grass.

They're tiny little velociraptors.  It's a miniaturized Lost World, looking for a little tiny Jeff Goldblum.
And when the big one is staring at you through the kitchen window, you can tell she's working things out.  Respect the birds, people.  I'm convinced they'll be ruling the world one day.  After the robot are through with it.