Seeing a turkey
Seeing a wild turkey up close often involves being sized up: town turkeys keep a strict pecking order and may try to fit people into it. The meeting makes a good mirror for how you rank newcomers yourself.
What it may mean
Every flock of wild turkeys has a ranking, and every bird knows its place. Where people feed them, turkeys grow bold and may start treating humans as part of the flock, following a mail carrier, blocking a driveway or chasing a jogger, especially in spring. Wildlife officers advise people not to back down, because a turkey that wins once ranks you lower the next time. It is comic to be sized up by a bird, and also familiar. People rank one another within minutes too: the new coworker, the parent at pickup, the neighbor with the loud truck. Often the ranking happens before any real knowledge does. Being eyed by a turkey from the curb is funny, and it can also sharpen your eye for how fast you place others.
Depending on how you saw it
A flock crossing the road
Turkeys often cross roads in a slow line, one bird at a time, and stop traffic while the stragglers decide whether to follow. Hurrying them rarely works. Where in your day could you let a slow procession pass without fuming?
Turkeys roosting in trees at dusk
At sunset wild turkeys fly up into tall trees to sleep, which surprises people who think of them as ground birds. Turkeys that stayed perched and refused to come down were once said to foretell snow. Where do you go to feel safe once the day is over?
Finding a turkey feather
Wild turkey feathers are barred in bronze, brown and black, and a long tail feather can be the size of a ruler. Flocks drop them as they molt and dust-bathe. Which small thing left behind by someone tells you more about them than they intended to share?
A turkey gobbling at your door
An old saying, printed in 1903, held that a turkey gobbling at you as you arrived at a house meant you were welcome there. A gobble is chiefly a male announcing himself. How do you show a visitor they are welcome before you say a word?
Why it happens in nature
Wild turkeys feed on the ground by day in flocks and fly up into trees to roost at night. Within each flock birds keep a pecking order, and turkeys that get used to people, often through bird feeders, may treat humans as lower-ranking flock members to be challenged, most often in the spring breeding season.
To reflect on
How quickly do you place a newcomer somewhere in your own ranking, and what is it based on?