Bob Tarte

by Enslaved by Ducks

AGAINST ALL ODDS, I genuinely liked turkeys. Shortly after we were married, Linda and I took her mom to the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary near Battle Creek. As we walked from habitat to habitat watching swans, geese, and ducks, a turkey tagged along for no apparent reason other than that it enjoyed our company. Staying just behind us on the walkway, it even ignored the corn we flung at the waterfowl. More recently, Linda and I had stayed overnight in a blue caboose at the Choo-Choo Motel in Strasbourg, Pennsylvania, in the heart of Amish country. A de facto petting zoo on the premises included turkeys that perched unperturbed on a split-rail fence as I posed among them for a snapshot. The turkeys were far more trusting than any other bird I had ever encountered, and I found an unexpected sweetness in their faces. Their large eyes, miniscule heads, comically massive bodies, and clumsiness when attempting to do anything other than standing in one spot struck a responsive chord.

  Although I was eager to help the Bradford Street turkeys, I was uneasy about taking on a full quartet. For one thing, we had no clear idea where to put them. The barn seemed like the natural place, but they couldn’t live entirely indoors. Our fenced-in backyard was a good three hundred feet from the closest entrance to the barn, and I knew that the turkeys wouldn’t herd any better than the indomitable Hector. I also wasn’t keen on acquiring an injured bird in need of immediate medical help. That matter, at least, was cleared up to Linda’s satisfaction when Nancy Oostdyke called her the same night.

  “I would be absolutely thrilled to have you take the turkeys,” she told Linda. “They’ve become real nuisances, chasing the children around the yard. There’s only one problem.”

  “I wanted to ask you about that,” said Linda. “What happened to the turkey that can’t walk?”

  “Which one can’t walk?”

  “The one we left laying down next to your yard light.”

  “They were all walking around when we came home from the cottage. They wouldn’t leave the kids alone.”

  I was thunderstruck when Linda reported this to me. “What does she mean all four turkeys were walking around? Did she actually see them walking around?”

  “I asked her about it twice. I said, ‘Are you sure all four turkeys are okay? Are you positive?’ And she told me there wasn’t anything wrong with them as far as she could see.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I complained. “Unless they’re just trying to dump an injured turkey on us.”

  “That’s not it,” Linda said. “The husband doesn’t even want us to take them. Nancy—that’s the wife—has to talk to John and get back to us tomorrow. He wants to keep them, but she thinks she can convince him they’d be better off with us. And she also said they’d only give them to us if all of them were healthy,” she added, to forestall further pointless arguments from me about the fourth turkey’s ability to walk.

  Later that night, Nancy Oostdyke called Linda back and agreed to give us the turkeys. John would even bring them over himself. It turned out his reluctance to part with them had little to do with attachment to the birds. His kids had their hearts set on taking a turkey to school for show-and-tell when Thanksgiving week rolled around, and we had to give our word to lend them one for the occasion.

  “Did you ask her again about the injured bird?”

  “Her husband said the turkey was fond of lying down.”

  “Fond of lying down?” I sputtered. “That’s ridiculous. It couldn’t even stand up.”

  “We’ll see for ourselves tomorrow when Mr. Oostdyke brings them here,” she told me, in the patient tone of voice used with a slow-on-the-uptake child.

  John Oostdyke arrived right after dinner with a refrigerator-size cage containing all four turkeys in the bed of a gleaming dollar bill–green pickup truck. Not only was he filthy with money, but he was also sickeningly healthy. I didn’t realize what a big guy he was until he stood next to me and took my robin’s foot of a hand into his massive paw. While I had struggled under the load of a single turkey, Oostdyke grabbed two of the birds, pressed one under each arm, and whisked them down to our duck pen. He carried them as easily as one would two bags of groceries, with almost as much regard for his cargo. Two children trailed behind him. I hadn’t seen them earlier, presumably because they had been engulfed by his shadow.

  “That’s the four of them,” he boomed, as he released the last two birds. Our ducks and geese huddled together in a corner on the far side of the pen. Even Hector seemed cowed by the bustling visitor.

  “Daddy, it’s a goose,” the blond-haired girl observed, as she pointed at Liza.

  “All of them standing,” he offered, with a generous smile in my direction.

  “Are those your geese?” the girl asked me. The boy entered the pen to bid one of the turkeys farewell by stroking its neck. Then he jumped back, shielding his face as two of the turkeys flapped their wings and hopped clumsily to the top of a squat shelter resembling a failed bookcase that I had built for the ducks.

  “Come on kids, Mom’s expecting us.”

  “Thanks so much for the turkeys. We’ll take good care of them,” Linda assured him. “Call us before Thanksgiving if you want to borrow one.” The little boy nodded happily as his father grasped the cab of their pickup truck, lifted the vehicle to shoulder height, shook open both doors, and set it back down on the gravel—or if he didn’t actually do that, he looked as if he could have. With a couple of toots of the horn and strands of blond hair trailing out an open window, the Oostdykes were gone.

  “We’ve been visited by a god,” I mused, but Linda was already down at the pen yelling at me to come quickly.

  Imagine a square divided into four smaller squares. The boys’ enclosure consisted of a single square with its own door to the outside, while the more numerous girls occupied the remaining L-shaped enclosure. To accommodate the turkeys overnight, I had blocked the leg of the L at foot level with a board. Higher up, I had stretched an old wool blanket between two vertical pen supports to discourage border transgression by flight. The cobbled-together divider would have worked fine with a duck, because a duck would never try to breach what appeared to be a solid barrier. However, I had vastly underestimated the strength, stubbornness, and unusual worldview of a turkey. The gobblers completely ignored the flimsy blanket in favor of launching themselves at the wire pen walls like feathered cannonballs.

  “They’re not used to being cooped up,” Linda told me, as the entire pen shook around us. Each time a turkey threw its weight against the wire, it sounded as if a monstrous tennis racquet had served up a wet Saint Bernard.

  “We can’t let them roam loose!” I said. I had to holler to hear my own voice above a cacophony of turkey yips and goose honks.

  “They can’t stay in here, either. They’ll wreck the pen.”

  “We’ll have to put them in the barn.”

  “They’ll hate that even more. But at least they can’t knock it down.”

  “We’d better do it now!” I urged Linda, gallantly allowing her to precede me into the poultry maelstrom. Fortunately, the turkeys’ unruliness was wholly directed at the enclosure. They probably regarded us as fellow prisoners pitching in to help them escape. Linda and I each picked up a bird. They protested no further than to make a few pro forma flaps of the wings and some halfhearted foot-thrashing as we toted them out to the barn, into the same enclosure that Daphne had hated so much. But instead of massing for a punishing attack on the plank walls, the turkeys settled down and acted right at home, as if a propensity for barns had been lurking in their genes all along. One by one they half-hopped, half-flew up to the wooden stanchion rails and settled in for a peaceful snooze.

  That left us with the problem of what to do with them during the day. In the back of my mind stirred the idea of somehow shuffling the ducks around and acclimating the turkeys to a section of their pen. Then they could amble around the yard while the ducks strip-mined our few remaining patches of healthy lawn. This seemed to be the easiest solution. They certainly couldn’t lead a dual life on the
eastern and western extremities of our property with terra turkey incognita in between.

  After the turkeys had assembled in the backyard to suitable arm-waving and shouted encouragement from us, we released the female ducks and geese. Disaster was immediate. As soon as the birds had waddled out of their pen, the turkeys took off after them. The fury they had shown the previous night toward the walls of the duck pen was nothing compared to the vigor with which they lit into the waterfowl. While I didn’t witness them actually land a single peck, the terrorism of their pursuit was punishing enough. The ducks and geese must have felt like Roman soldiers upon seeing Hannibal’s elephants bearing down on them. Hollering for them to stop, Linda and I added our bodies to the mêlée. College Bob would have abandoned all hope for the future at the sorry spectacle of Married Bob chasing turkeys that were chasing ducks, and sympathy stirred in my bosom for me/us. Once again, the turkeys didn’t struggle when we caught them. They were grateful to be removed from the company of their inferiors and happy to return to their beloved barn. Clearly they would have to live there, and clearly I would have to add another round of fence-building to my résumé.

  Just in time, the following Saturday, to prepare for Bill Holm’s appearance as my caustic construction assistant, I had my first visit to Psychiatric Professionals for the renewal of my Zoloft prescription since Dr. Glaser’s departure. Dr. Jerold Rick could hardly have been more different from his predecessor. He introduced himself with a hearty handshake, tarried in the doorway of a kitchenette to ask if I wanted a cup of coffee, then led me to an office whose picture-covered walls had more personality than I did. Dr. Rick opened our session by devoting a couple of minutes to giving me his background: College in upstate New York in the late 1970s. Travels in Central America and Eastern Europe. Medical school in Illinois. Primary practice in Okemos, just outside of Lansing. Gig at Psychiatric Professionals two days a week. House in the country. Passionate about woodworking and music. As he talked, I read the driftwood-framed Thoreau quote above his head, admired a Martin guitar nestled in a metal tripod near his desk, and examined the picture on his computer screen of an Amish barn raising for any sign of Johnny Castaway–type activity.

  Dr. Rick slouched in an overstuffed chair with his legs crossed. I could easily imagine his curly, greying hair extended to shoulder length and his fingers pinching a fat doobie. Appearances to the contrary, he turned out to be anything but laid-back. Unlike the pharmaceutical companies’ best friend, Dr. Glaser, he immediately expressed an antipathy toward a pill-popping approach to mental health.

  “How long are you planning on taking the Zoloft?” he asked abruptly.

  “As long as I need to,” I told him. He had not made it sound as if the Zoloft were my best friend.

  “It doesn’t bother you that you could be taking this drug for the rest of your life?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t consider myself any different than a person who needs thyroid medication. Besides, I’m taking an awfully low dosage, so I don’t think I have to worry about long-term effects too much.”

  He leaned forward in his chair. “What makes you think a low dosage of Zoloft would have fewer long-term effects than a higher dose? There hasn’t been any long-term research on Zoloft or Prozac or any of the other SSRI drugs, because they haven’t been around long enough for extended studies.”

  “So you’re saying I should stop taking Zoloft even though it’s helping me,” I said, as a flush of anger rose to my face.

  “No, I’m not saying that at all. I just wanted to understand your attitude toward the medication.”

  “Would you like to recommend an alternative?”

  “Relax,” he told me. “No, not at all. You’re doing fine.” But he left me feeling unsettled and confused, which is probably how a clever psychiatrist guarantees repeat business.

  The prospect of assembling yet another fence did little to lift my spirits. The armload of fence posts needed for a six-foot-high, dog-proof enclosure filled the interior of my car from its back deck to the dashboard, and the sharp metal ends of the posts gouged figure-eights into my glove-compartment door as I trucked them home. I first tried to carry, then ended up rolling, two heavy bails of fifty-foot fencing from our driveway to the barn, gasped for breath at the exertion, and was splashing my face with water from the pump when Bill Holm arrived.

  “Sink broken? Or are the turkeys using your bathroom?”

  “They’re just over there,” I told him, pointing to the enclosure. “Go on in and introduce yourself.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. They like people a lot.” I neglected to mention that their expression of affection included launching amorous pecks at the arms and legs of admirers. Each turkey was the equivalent of Hector with a sharp beak, and commingling with four at once kept a person on his toes. “They love being petted on the head,” I suggested.

  “They are kind of pretty up close,” he called back. “Aren’t you beautiful?” he cooed to one of the girls. Linda and I had determined that all four birds were females by studying pictures in our birding field guides and noting the absence of fleshy dewlaps. It didn’t take long for Bill to experience the full glory of turkey behavior. “Ouch!” he hollered. “One of them’s biting me. Yowch! Two of them. Stop it! How do I get out of here? I’m surrounded!”

  “They’ll do that,” I told him blandly, as I left the barn and headed for the basement to fetch the tools.

  In theory, putting up a poultry fence was simple. You mapped out the shape of your enclosure, pounded in the metal posts at three-foot intervals, and hooked the fencing under the tabs on the posts, unrolling the bail as you went. Then you gave each post a couple of final whacks with a hammer to tighten its grasp on the fencing. But success depends on being able to sink your posts more than an inch into the ground. The barn seemed to have been built on top of a heap of boulders sprinkled with a cosmetic layer of dirt. As a result, Bill and I were forced to significantly alter the enclosure shape. I would begin by positioning a post at an ideal location, beat on it in vain with a hammer, then shake my head to relieve the ringing in my ears produced by metal striking rock. With the greatest optimism, I would move the post two inches in each compass direction. In the end I would have to deviate a foot or so off the parallel before I managed to slip the post into a crevice between adjacent boulders.

  “Weren’t we trying to make a rectangle?” Bill snorted.

  “This follows the natural contours better than a static rectilinear form,” I said.

  “‘Natural contours’ is right. It’s shaped exactly like your head, if you can call that natural.”

  I shushed him. “Hold it a second.”

  “What?”

  “You hear that?” Off and on throughout the morning, the turkeys had erupted into doggy yips from the other side of the barn door. “Somebody’s looking for you,” I told him. “You better go to her. But this time don’t lead her on with talk about how beautiful she is unless you plan on making an honest turkey of her.”

  The turkeys took to their outdoor pen at once. It was large enough that they didn’t experience the kind of anxiety attack that had gripped them in the duck pen, which was fortunate. I didn’t think I’d have much luck convincing Dr. Rick to give me four more prescriptions for Zoloft. Even though they now had three hundred square feet of weed-infested, stony ground to explore, Linda was afraid they’d miss the rambling lifestyle of their Bradford Street days. Their love of the barn outweighed their wanderlust, however. Some days, in fact, even after Linda pushed open their door, they didn’t bother to hop down from the stanchion rails until she went back to the barn, shooed them to the floor, and hustled them outside.

  Because the turkeys were essentially self-contained—coming and going from barn to pen as they pleased—I didn’t expect that Linda would have an opportunity to spoil them. But she managed. She decided that apples would be good for their health. At night after she had closed up the barn and the turkeys were on their per
ches, Linda would go from bird to bird holding an apple in her hand, allowing each turkey to peck at it. One evening she told me, “I don’t think the girls are happy about having to bite into a whole apple.” I had no suitable response. I merely watched as she diced the apple and put it into a bowl, which she presented to their highnesses in turn. And to insure that no turkey felt left out, she would offer each bird only a bite at a time so that she could make several rounds. The fussier turkeys might let the bowl pass them once or twice before they deigned to take their treat.

  One night after she came in from the barn, I told her, “I can’t believe anyone thinks turkeys are stupid.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Who Cooks for You?

  I knew I never should have called the owl into our yard. I don’t consider myself particularly superstitious, although it’s true I won’t go anywhere in my car without buckling the seat belt first, and I have a phobia about running red lights or driving in reverse on the freeway. Automobiles aside, I like to think my decisions in life are guided by the rudder of common sense rather than blown willy-nilly by folkloric hokum and balderdash. But something about owls gives me the creeps. They’re secretive. They inhabit dark and lonely places. Their cries are eerie and foreboding. They see better on a moonless night than I do in full light of day huddled in front of my computer screen. They can zero in on prey using their hearing alone, swooping down on huge wings that make less of a rustle than an ant crawling on a napkin. Not for nothing are owls considered potent symbols of the invisible realm and harbingers of death.

  But I couldn’t resist calling one into our yard. It was a barred owl, and ever since I had first moved into our house, I would hear its distinctive cry in the spring. You can’t mistake a barred owl for anything else. “Who cooks for you?” it demands in the middle of the night, after even the telemarketers have gone to bed. “Who cooks for you all?” it repeats in dialect, betraying its identity as the spooky old hoot owl of Southern swamps. Though I had heard the barred owl several times, I had seen one exactly once—an hour before an owl aficionado came over for dinner, strangely enough. On my way to the grocery store to pick up a head of broccoli in the late afternoon, the sight of a large bird fluttering in the bare tree branches less than a quarter of a mile from our house stopped me dead on the road. I went back for Linda, and we sat in the car watching his deep black eyes watch us. When he tired of the rubbernecking, he launched his heavy body off the tree, laboriously flapped his wings, and sailed across the street.