Turkey Talk At 5 A.M.: What A Way To Start A Day

One morning last spring about 5 a.m., I slumbered and dreamed the dreams of early morning. In my dream, out of context as things are, I heard a turkey gobble. I bolted upright, awake, when I heard it again. I woke up Bobbi and said, “Darlin’, I just heard a turkey,” to which she joyously replied some rather inappropriate comment.

I went to my hunting room and got out my thunderdome slate and glass striker and went to the window and yelped softly. Once, twice, three times and stopped, waited, listened. Nothing.

Of course, you don’t hear a turkey outside your window at 19th and Hatch in a city of 192,000 on a morning in March. I call again. Once, twice. I’m out of my mind, of course. There’s not any …

Gobble-obble-obble-obble. Gobble-obble-obble.

Amazing. There, roosted in the pines not more than 100 yards from the house, are two yearling toms and three hens.

Subsequently, my wife told me there had been a picture in the paper just the day before of five turkeys somewhere on the South Side of Spokane. And now, here they were, live and up close at my house. It had to be fate, one of my secret dreams come true.

I called my buddy.

“Hello,” he whispered in the receiver.

“Joe, there’s a turkey at my house!”

He says he already knows that and asks what I am doing calling his household at some ungodly hour in the morning. It had better be good.

I played the thunderdome, several soft strokes, and held the receiver to the window screen. He heard it, too, as if to reaffirm my sanity.

We’ve had wild moose and even a cougar in Manito Park this year, black bears at Garden Springs. Bald eagles have been sighted in the skies over Spokane. The usual riffraff of white-tailed deer, raccoons, the unmistakable smell of skunks on Rockwood Boulevard. But the most heartfelt thrill I think I ever will have while we live in this house is to hear the sound that brought me out of my dreams that morning, the sound that is synonymous with my favorite animal on this planet, the wild turkey.

My wife said I’d definitely be “unlivable” for the rest of the day and most likely for several days to come. She expected her morning reverie to be crumbled up in the strokes of my slate calling out the dawn window, searching for the answering gobble of a wild turkey. Oh happy day.

MEMO: To submit a “Your turn” column for consideration, contact Rebecca Nappi at 459-5496 or Doug Floyd at 459-5466 or write “Your turn,” The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane 99210-1615.