Talking Turkey

I am feeling much more generous, calmer and more forgiving and probably in a better frame of mind to talk turkey than I would have been when I got home after dark last night.I have just returned from a very good market day . The sun is shining brightly and I feel an optimism that had completely escaped me when I got home last night to our bevy of Christmas turkeys hunkered down in a huddle at my back door on my back veranda. By the way with a bevy of turkeys comes a massive amount of poop. A minefield of poop really in all descriptions from runny to solid lumps. Not a very nice topic and not a very nice thing to come home to.Turkeys are challenging to get in at night. Burton makes the constant strong argument that free range need to be FREE range and so they spend their days meandering wherever they want to go. To put them in for the night you have to start rounding them up at just the right time;not too dark, not too early when they have no intention of going to bed. ( this somewhat reminds me of getting kids to bed) You have to begin to round them up trying to keep them together, but invariably one of two fly off in the wrong direction tempting others to follow. You keep at it with the goal of getting them to move in a crowd as the momentum improves if they are herded closely together and move as one. Once you get them across the driveway it seems they get the message that it is bedtime. Usually with a few gentle reminders as you move the broom from side to side as they keep moving until you get them close to the shed and they file in. This method does not work at all if you wait too long and they have already decided they are having a sleepover on the back veranda. They don't understand that that is not a good idea or healthy for at least one or two of them which will probably become a midnight snack for a fox, a raccoon or a coyote that under the cover of darkness has no trouble coming in for the challenge and the reward.I did my best to attempt a round up but was only successful at herding them off the veranda and down in front of the basement door. I could not see any hope of getting them all the way across the yard and into their shed. I do not pick birds up. I do a lot of things but that has never been one of them. I came in very pissed off by the poop and very concerned that we would have fewer Christmas turkeys freely roaming in the morning.Sometime later after I was in bed Caleb came and heroically relocated the birds (by moving them individually I expect) and I haven't counted them since I got home but I think they are all accounted for. So now after a morning of selling books,seeing friends and neighbors and meeting new people I am venting in this manner. I just ate a delicious lunch of Massaman curry from a wonderful Thai vendor at the market. I will go tackle (scrape) the poop off the back veranda. Last night I was not sure I could live with such conditions. It hadn't helped that my absent husband had left his lunch mess in the pantry. Things are usually better the next day and I am glad we can't instantly file for divorce and end a forty year marriage in a moment of anger and frustration. Good thing I might add.