12-05-06

I have a large population of squirrels in my back yard, which I enjoy watching. I find it fun to chuckle like a squirrel and watch them get friendly with me when I feed them a handful of last year’s pecans. The pecans are scarce this year due to the dry weather.

Another fun past time for me is to sit on the back porch and call the blue jays, mockingbirds, doves, sparrows, black birds and occasional hummingbirds. While watching the birds, I make a bird call with my mouth, making a sound or chirp that they are familiar with. When I give the squeaky chirping bird sound, all of the birds within hearing distance think that a cat has caught one of the birds and they all flock in to see the bird in distress. I have gotten so friendly with all of my birds, that I think of them as my friends. They all seem to find comfort in my backyard.

Every so often a cat catches a blue jay. The blue jay is no hanky panky bird, they put up a real fight with the cats. The blue jays will charge the cats and cause the cats to run for safety.

There are some beautiful red birds that hang out in our yard. Jackie puts out bird food that all of the birds like to congregate around. Jackie enjoys the little hummingbirds. They are so friendly that when we are reading the newspaper on the back porch they fly over to the feeder with the red liquid syrup. After they gracefully sip up a little swig of the liquid food, they gracefully flutter over to hum around the top of the newspaper. I told Jackie that they are flying over to thank me for all of her efforts.

But now, we have wild turkeys wandering around the neighborhood. This past Saturday there was a group of ten turkeys in our neighborhood. The turkeys can be a nuisance, because they are not particular where they use the restroom.

I remember back when my mother would call the turkeys in to eat. My mother went to a special effort to make a dry cottage cheese to feed the turkeys. They would smell the cheese and would come running and flogging anything that got in their way.

Jackie put out some food for the cats on Saturday, and the turkeys ran the cats off and took over the cat food. This particular flock of turkeys must have been through some hard times. They are very tough. They don’t seem to allow anything to hurt or bother them.

My mother would call her turkey in with a "pert, pert, pert, pert, " and then a "gobble, gobble, gobble." So when the turkeys came to see me on Saturday, I thought I would use my Mama’s call. Sure enough this group had a leader that raised his head high in the air after I made my call.

I watched this flock when a large dog ran up with his mouth watering for turkey. But, the turkeys had much experience in self protection. Three turkeys attacked the dog while the rest took their long flopping wings and quickly flew up in the middle of one of the pecan trees.

Jackie fed them some bread and they continued to make their round. They are like a hungry Cherokee, if you feed them, they will come back.

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