Turkey Girl

For almost four years, this wild turkey made her daily rounds to several homes on my road, visiting and eating from a pan full of corn. Yes, I know some say not to feed wild animals — but Goldie was different.

The first time I saw her, she was looking at her reflection in the glass door of my studio, the sun beaming on her glistening feathers. In the snow. Cold. Lonely. She needed a friend, a flock, so she stayed, eating what fell from my bird feeders. And then I decided to feed her.

She didn’t just eat her corn and run. She regularly visited a neighbor as she worked in her lovely garden; accommodations were made for how high up the net started to allow Goldie some low-lying berries on the blueberry bushes.

I would hear Turkey Girl’s morning gobble and make sure her pan had plenty. Then she’d mosey over to the front porch, fluff her feathers and preen for a while.

Goldie preening

She’d leave feathers of all types.

If she was within earshot, she’d come when I called. One of my most endearing memories is Goldie stopping her foraging in the field when I called “Turkey Girl!” You’ve heard of the Turkey Trot? Well, she’d hold her wings at a sky-dive level and run at gallop speed, gobbling all the way. Such laughter she brought to me.

She’d visit me while I sat on my barn porch, clucking and cooing. Once, just back from art class, she joined me to see what I’d set down in the other chair. She gave no critique of my unfinished rooster.

Goldie eyeing the rooster

In the freezing cold of winter, she could find warm water in the electric bucket at the corner of my house. When I’d travel, my neighbor would fill the corn pan here, but Turkey Girl would hang out at her house after eating instead of my vacant place.

Every so often when the turkey and I would be together, she’d hunker down and make little cooing sounds. I learned that was when she wanted to be petted. She would nudge my hand with her neck, close her eyes and coo, almost like purring.

But all good things come to an end. After visiting almost everyday for three years, we like to think Goldie did what comes naturally: she disappeared into the nearby woods where she came from to mate and nest and raise her poults. And although most wild turkey hens look alike, we think we’ve seen her with a line of little ones.

We just wish she’d brought the grandkids home to see their grandmothers!