There's a Witch in the Woods!

Red Squirrel; Deb Marshall photo

One winter, many many winters ago, three wild turkeys came to visit us – or to check out the area under the wart rail where I feed the winter birds, to be precise.  They sashayed through twice in two days, and we never saw them again. The cats were alarmed, the dogs were terrorized, and we never thought anything about it again, except to think it was odd that the turkeys that live in the woods behind us never showed up to scavenge seeds the sloppy winter birds toss on the ground.

During the winter we get a variety of birds eating the seed we put out: chickadees, cardinals, bluejays, mourning doves, nuthatches, some grosbeaks, some little black ones with bright yellow beaks, and some slim swift red squirrels and some fat fat grey squirrels. Crows get into the compost bin and keep it mixed about during the winter and on very rare occasions they’ll come snag a few nuts or fly off with the suet block.

But this year, we’ve also had turkeys. For awhile they’d straggle here in twos or threes; but for the past couple of months they arrive either in a group of four, or a herd of 17. Any motion they see in the house as we try to sneak up on the windows to peer out at them, strange prehistoric-looking things that they are, sends them racing back over the marsh towards the woods, or sometimes flying in crashing bumbling self-imposed terror into the trees on the far side of the field. After awhile, they come back out of the woods, and we’ll see them slipping and sliding about on the ice, from time to time popping their heads up over the wart decking, looking amazingly like an ostrich, to see if anything alarming is about.

Oddly, they’re scared if we open a door or look out the windows, but are very slow to move if we arrive by car while they’re noshing. One morning Catman in his lordliness stalked and herded the entire flock of 17 out of our yard and into the neighbors’, then sat at the edge of the driveway and glared at them long enough that they didn’t come back until much later that day. Another day before the deep snow, after filling their crops they all hunkered down along the edge of the driveway and took mud baths and naps. And they seem to have made a truce with a couple of the fat squirrels, who will get down on the driveway amongst them and share the feed I toss out , and with the other birds, who pretty much ignore them as they fly to the wart rail to eat, dropping extra goodies for them onto the snowbank below.

We look forward to seeing them. And you know – up close, in the sun, a turkey’s bland plumage is absolutely gorgeous, flashing streaks of blue and purple and green and gold in those otherwise dull black and brown feathers.  But for the past month, instead of coming daily, sometimes the turkeys disappear for several days at a time. And I’ve noticed something odd: on the days the turkeys are here, there are no mourning doves – none at all that day. And on the days the mourning doves are here, there are no turkeys – also none at all that day. Some weeks one or the other will be gone for days, but never at the same time.

Curious, I thought. So I started counting them, and discovered that there are exactly as many mourning doves as there are turkeys. This is very very curious – most years, we have only four or five mourning doves, but this year, we get a group of four, or a herd of 17. 

Hmmm, I thought, again. This has been a strange winter. And a hard one for birds and squirrels and turkeys, because the over-abundance of chipmunks this summer hauled off all the wild foods these critters would normally be eating – the chipmunks squirreled it away or ate it before they went to their winter nests. The deer are also having a hard time this year, because the little rodents stole all the apples and windfalls, too.

But why the interesting correlations between dove herds and turkey herds? This could be coincidence if it happened once or twice, but it happens every day.

No worries: I have a theory. It seems obvious that there’s a witch in the woods who’s turning turkeys into mourning doves, and mourning doves into turkeys. 

And I think I know who the witch is.

Besides that turkeys have been appearing at my house in ever-ascending numbers, the only other different thing that happened this past year – well, the only strange thing that happened locally, anyway – is that out-back naybah Eddie Bear sold his very strange and interesting house, which lies up the hill and through the woods in the direction the turkeys flee towards, to a Polish poet. And Eddie Bear’s house is one that would fascinate a witch – or a poet. It’s a house that is nowhere the same: many stairways, including one that descends into a cave-like space; hidden pathways for cats (and the poet got a couple of those familiars last summer, who spend a lot of time in the grape arbor that spans one of the several high-up decks); doors of odd shapes, some that one needs to stoop to get through; windows of many sizes and shapes and styles. No front door – in fact, no front of the house.  And a fascinating layout of rooms, on many different levels. It’s a house of uncountable storeys, and probably uncountable stories, too.

I’m on to you, Poet! I’ve read some of your poems, and they read like spells - conjuring, repeating, distilling, twisting, reappearing, unfurling, slithering, exploding, rushing, stalking, dripping, flying... 

You aren’t fooling me!

Szczesliwy poeta czarownicy!