Zooburbia by Tai Moses

Author:Tai Moses [Moses, Tai; Buchen, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937006686
Publisher: Parallax Press

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One afternoon I watched from my second-story window as a turkey hen crossed the street trailed by twelve or thirteen or maybe even fourteen—it was difficult to count them—newly hatched, stippled yellow-and-brown infant turkeys, also called poults. From the moment I saw them I began to worry about them. The hatchlings were so small and helpless, such defenseless bits of fluff. How could anything so vulnerable survive in this city? A red-tailed hawk circled overhead. A pair of ravens cackled from a telephone line. A neighbor’s dog lurched against a fence, barking. I heard the engine of the UPS truck rumbling up the street. Danger was everywhere.

The baby turkeys were pecking at spots on the street. Like chickens, who can forage for themselves within a few hours of hatching, the tiny turkeys were already self-sufficient. I watched nervously as a straggler fell behind, separated from the safety of the group. The hen yelped softly and repeatedly, reminding her brood to keep up. I noticed that certain vocalizations caused the poults to freeze in position, while others clearly meant “hurry up!”

From my observation post, I saw a cat shadowing the turkeys, its eyes trained on the slowpoke, but I was too far away to do anything about it. Just as the cat rushed forward to make a grab for the poult, my neighbor Erica dashed out the front door of her house as if she was doing the hundred-meter sprint at the Olympics. She raced up to the tiny turkey and scooped it up, thwarting the cat, who turned and ran. “You’re a hero, Erica!” I called out the window. Erica walked up the street to reunite the baby with its mother and siblings. The straggler would live another day, or another hour.

In the morning, the wild turkey family was foraging in the ravine behind my house. I could hear the hen clucking and the poults peep-peep-peeping as they followed her, a high-pitched peep that frankly was starting to drive me crazy as I pictured all the terrible things that could happen to them. These birds have an exceedingly high mortality rate: about seventy percent of hatchlings do not survive beyond two weeks. “It is very difficult to become a wild turkey,” Hutto remarked. I made a mental inventory of all the local predators who would love a tiny turkey sandwich: cat, dog, raccoon, hawk, crow, raven, even a hungry skunk. That’s why the turkey hen lays so many eggs. Evolution has designed the turkey to reproduce in excess. All of her offspring are not meant to survive to maturity; some of those balls of fluff would become protein to enable other animals to survive. I knew this was how nature was intended to work, yet knowing it didn’t make it any easier to bear.

The next day, the hillside was silent except for the usual calls of songbirds, squabbling of jays, and bustling of squirrels in trees. I didn’t hear a single cluck or yelp, not a single peep-peep-peep.

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