Down memory lane: Baby turkeys

My sister sent me this photo from her daily dose of "ICANHAZCHEEZBURGER," the popular Utube cute-animal video site. She knows that baby turkeys are yet another of the animals I love.

Remembering the farm critters from my past

In honor of "Turkey Day," my sister emailed me a link to her Thanksgiving cute animal of the day--a baby turkey. She knows I have a soft spot for the little birds.

Yes, I know that you've all heard that "turkeys are so stupid that they'll stand out in the rain with their heads up until they drown."

Shut up! I'm not talking about commercial turkeys bred for their white meat and raised in crowded pens for the yearly Thanksgiving slaughter!

My turkeys were given to us by my husband's grandfather Orville Tedford, Sr., who had a farm near Essex, Mo.

My oldest son must have been about three, so you can see how long ago it was. He's 37 now.

Those were happy times. Everything was new. My husband and his father had cleared the hillside and built a road across the pond levee, so they could build the house. We were populating the farm with small critters to play with--5 beautiful gray geese and two elusive guineas from Arab, Mo., and an ornery little goat from the Popular Bluff auction...

For some reason which now eludes me, I took two turkey eggs and hatched them out in an incubator, not trusting the mama to raise them by herself. Ah, foolish Madeline--that never worked out well--why did you persist?

We named the largest one "Freddie," and he was so tame that he ate flies out of our fingers. When my son ran across the yard, Freddie would run/fly along side him.

When the turkeys were small, they would cuddle in my arms and make small "weep, weeping" sounds. I loved to stroke their little square heads with my finger.

It was summertime, and they liked to scratch out a place in the yard, where they could lie in the sun and dust their feathers.

I say that I never learned, because--like the baby geese I also hatched out in the incubator--these babies imprinted on me as their mother, so they wanted to be with me all the time. That just doesn't work out.

Also, we let them run loose in the yard around the house, rather than keeping them in a pen. In both cases--the turkeys and the geese--an unruly dog was their undoing, leaving me heartbroken to this day. After all these years, I'm sad when I think of the little critters who fell prey to coyotes, raccoons, skunks and dogs...

I've stayed away from such foolishness for these last 20 years or so...but I still remember the pleasure my children received from them, and I'm glad that all three of my kids had the opportunity to grow up in the country with little critters as playmates.

From the wild, gray hills of Tillman, this is your former goat, chicken, geese, duck, hog and cattle herder Madeline, signing off on an after-Thanksgiving Saturday.