Talking turkey

With the exception of certain works of brutalist architecture, there's not much I think of as really ugly. But every time I see a turkey, I think, Man, those birds are ugly. In the past couple days, I've seen groups of wild turkeys roaming around my suburban neighborhood. They just walk down the middle of the street, across lawns or down the sidewalk. Sometimes, they run to catch up with each other. Sometimes they fly-hop a little up to a tree or roof. They seem largely unfazed by people. And while I find them creepy looking, the cool thing about them is that is encountering them feels like a brush with wildness. They are big, wild animals—charismatic megafauna, if you will—walking right in the midst of the built environment, right near people and cars and other utterly ordinary things. They way they look, the way they move, they are eerily reminiscent of the dinosaurs they are direct descendants of. Maybe I'm not exactly grateful for turkeys themselves, but for wild creatures continuing to survive in our human-dominated times.