So we drove up to the spot and had to hike out a little to get to the good places. Someone even put up an old bench swing that you can sit on too. We were planning to set up a spot overlooking the ravine to have our lunch. But that's when we realized we weren't alone out there. We turned around and there was a bunch of wild turkey's staring at us. Those suckers are ugly, by the way.
They seemed a little pissed that we were out there, but also interested in the bag of food we had too. We snapped a few pictures of them and then we figured they'd wander off. But they never did. So we tried to find a different spot to sit in that was further away.
So we sat down and everything seemed good. We were going to eat, and this turkey just came out nowhere and started gobbling at us. It scared us to death. We were laughing, but also trying to scramble to our feet because while we were sitting down, this huge thing was eye level to us. And we were afraid it was going to peck our eyes out.
We startled it by jumping up so fast and it got mad. It started running towards us! Nat was screaming and I was laughing. I couldn't believe we were being chased by a fucking turkey. I suppose you could add this to the list of things that have gone wrong lately for me. All I wanted to do was plan a nice relaxing picnic and instead we got chased by a turkey. What are the odds?
But this was just too funny to get that upset over. How could you not laugh? Before we ran, we did manage to grab our bag of food because we never even got started eating. But the blanket we had was still out there. We had to go back for it somehow. Once the turkey lost interest in us, we tried to walk around the long way back over to where the blanket was.
There were more turkey's lurking in the shadows though. We could see them poking their heads out of the tall grass just waiting to attack us. And there was now a turkey standing on our blanket. How were we going to get it back? We waited a bit to see if it would leave, but it wouldn't. I think it was going to build a nest or something.
So Nat and I discussed our plan of attack. We decided we'd run at the turkey waving our arms like lunatics and hope it would get scared and run away. I'm sure if anyone saw us doing this, they'd think we'd completely lost our minds. But who cares right? No one else was out there. This was between us and the turkey's.
The plan seemed to work too. At least at first. We charged at the evil feathered beast and it started making horrible turkey sounds and it ran off the blanket just as we hoped. I grabbed it fast, and we started to walk away. But some of the other turkey's didn't appreciate what we did to their friend, and there were about 5 of them stalking us.
So we had to run again. Well, maybe we didn't have to run, but we didn't trust those things and it's better to be safe than sorry, right? We escaped unharmed and it was actually a lot of fun to run for your life from a pack of turkey's. It's definitely not something we usually do every day. It was amusing to say the least. And I think the adrenaline rush of almost dying by turkey attack made me feel better.
We ended up eating our picnic in the car instead. But that worked out fine. I love nature and I love animals. But sometimes it's better to sit in your car and just observe the nature and the animals from afar instead of being right on the front lines. But all in all, this little adventure was just what I needed to forget about life for awhile. It's pretty hard to worry about broken teeth, tires and medical bills when you're running with turkey's through a field of wildflowers.
Here are some pictures of where we tried to have our picnic and a few of our gobbling enemies.
There are a few more pictures of the landscape and the turkey's at my Flickr page for anyone who's interested in seeing them too.
Anyone else thinking about Thanksgiving right now or is it just me?
