Turkey stories

I should have come home from my Quilt retreat all enthusiastic and ready to go again but instead I came home with a cold and things have gone down hill from there. I have just been trying to survive the week knowing I have a free weekend and plenty of time to rest up. I don’t remember having been this sick for a long while. So with that said I still have no pictures of items I made at the retreat. I do have a picture of a fantastic little wool turkey that Dawn made me. I love it! She knows I am a turkey lover. I have written before about our pet turkey Wilbur. At one time we had many turkeys, for no apparent reason other then I just loved having them around. If you don’t like sad but strange endings I guess now is the time to stop reading. Okay, another turkey story. I first must mention that I am a dog lover. Those who know me know that I am crazy about our dog Bullvye and that he is treated as well as the children. I have always been a dog lover. Our neighbors at our old farm had a dog. I felt sorry for him in that he wasn’t well treated, they didn’t pay attention to him, he was always outdoors and would be gone for days then come home. He also wasn’t a very nice dog. He liked to visit our turkeys on his rambles. Most times he would maime or kill one. We kept building our fence up and eventually put barbed wire across the top in our efforts to keep him out. We had talked to our neighbors about it but they didn’t feel the need to do anything. One morning we heard a yelping. Low and behold the dog was caught up on the barbed wire. He had made it inside the pen but was not able to make it out. We hurriedly called the neighbors and headed out to get him. Our poor Esmeralda was dead. Neighbor arrived to retrieve his dog and made a strange suggestion to us. It seems that in olden days if a dog was killing chickens they would tie the dead chicken around the dog’s neck and lock him up. Eventually the smell of the chicken would stop him from wanting to kill them again. I don’t know if this is myth or not but he asked if he could take Esmeralda with him to give this a try. I regret that we said yes, but we did. The next day we received a phone call from him, it seems that in the night hours the dog had tried to jump the fence that was keeping him in the barn. In the process Esmeralda got caught up in it and in his effort to get away Esmeralda had choked him and he had died. I guess even in her death she got her revenge, not only for herself but for the others. Sad story but true! Okay, one more turkey story then I will end. Said dog had made a visit to our brood early one week. No deaths but 2 were messed up pretty bad. My husband had some spray that our country vet had given us to keep infection away. That Friday afternoon we came home from work to check on them and they had maggots on them. My husband immediately called our vet, he told him the situation and asked what he could do for them over the weekend, that we didn’t expect him to come out on a Friday evening. Our vet an older gentleman answered him like this, “Jeff, if you had maggots on your ass would you want to wait until Monday morning?” Point well taken, he came that night.
See you Monday!