North Florida - Wild Florida: Wild Turkeys

I really like wild turkeys. I see them often along 345 on my way to Cedar Key
(except during turkey hunting season) and sometimes one will visit the farm.
They are wily birds.
The third year we lived on the farm, a fellow who sold us some cows made
me a present of a trio of wild turkeys - the Osceola variety with the red legs.
We built a pen and a roost and the turkeys lived out by the chicken and duck
pens and made more turkeys. Every spring, the hens scraped a hole in the
corner of the pen, laid eggs, sat on them, and hatched out a bunch of poults.
Some of the poults got eaten. Some of them got sold.

Early one fall morning when the kids were in grade school, I went out to
the duck pen to get some duck eggs for pancakes, glanced at the turkeys, and
noticed the gobbler lying on the ground, wings wide-spread, under the roost.
The 2 hens and 4 poults were still on the roost, looking down at him. He was
flat in the dust - stone cold dead.
I`ll take care of this later, I thought, and went on to get the duck eggs.
Later in the kitchen, while the kids were shoveling down their pancakes, I broke
The News. "Papa turkey is dead," I announced.
No sense in beating around the bush. This was a farm - things died sometimes.
"Oh no," the son said immediately, "what will mama turkey do?"
(Probably be relieved, I thought, that mister big heavy turkey has gone to the great oak forest in the sky..)
But I restrained myself.
"Oh," I said, "There`s a few male turkeys in that batch of poults. One of them can be the new gobbler."
The daughter put her fork down and looked at me. "Isn`t that inbreeding?"
(You know, sometimes it`s nice having smart kids, but sometimes it`s a trial.)
I looked her in the eye. "That doesn`t matter with turkeys."
"Yeah," the son said, "it doesn`t matter with turkeys." He finished his pancake and looked up at me.
"What`s inbreeding?"
I noticed the clock. "Good grief, look at the time! Y`all will be late for
school if you don`t hurry."
As they left to brush their teeth and get their school books, I heard whispering in the hall ...
But it really didn`t matter. The poults turned out to be one sister turkey and 3 males - Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas turkey, and replacement gobbler.
Through the next few years, the big turkeys hatched out lots of little turkeys, all of which had just one head, two wings, and were as smart as their parents.
And the new gobbler was a good tom turkey who eventually shared his genes
with a few really wild turkey hens who came around to visit.
But that is another story ...