Close Encounter

Generally I don't like (read: fear) animals unless they are domesticated. Although I enjoy seeing them in a zoo or observing them from my car, I would rather not have encounters without any sort of barrier between me and the animal. Part of this is due to my ignorance and part of it is due to past experience. This included a rather unfortunate incident with a goose. Thinking that geese must be nice, I learned a life lesson to the contrary and now believe all fowl must be evil incarnate.

With that background in mind, I went for a hike up at the Windy Hill Preserve. As I was turning around a bend, I came upon two wild turkeys. Since I am always thinking of my readers, I took out my camera and went in for a picture. Apparently I crossed some invisible boundary because one of the turkeys put his feathers up and started to come at me. This was definitely a gesture of great displeasure rather than greeting, so I did the only honorable thing – I darted back around the bend to hide. Since I was stuck on the trail until they moved on, I tried whistling loudly as a "shoo!" technique. In response to every one of my whistles, they gobbled replies back at me (perhaps they are not as wild as I thought). They were now camouflaged in the trees, but I was able to circumnavigate their location based on the direction of their gobbles. Thankfully, I made it past them without having another goose incident.

As I was unable to take pictures, here is my recreation of the scene (see the turkey and the chicken):

Comments

[andrew]

Having had an encounter with a small number of geese and ducks once when I was young, I can fully sympathize with your situation. And those wild turkeys can be very wiley, which probably explains why they're still alive and not sitting on someone's thanksgiving dinner plate. (and is it a sign of how much work with graphs and diagrams you've been doing, that you included the little 'not to scale' warning? *grin*)

[Steve]

I sympathize, Caolionn. When I was a young boy, I was chased up a tree by a wild New England turkey. Being nearly the same size as that beast didn't put me in a positive offensive position, so I did all I could to get up high. While they may not be "evil incarnate" -- let's reserve that honor for spiders, please -- big birds can be an ornery lot.

[Jennifer]

HAHAHAHAHA! I think most of us have had the unfortunate experience of being chased by some kind of angered animal. Although we ended up developing some unnatural phobia from our experiences, it sure makes for some good comedy. You should have titled this blog "Physicist gets chased by evil turkey incarnate!" Thanks for the good laugh this Monday morning Caolionn.

[Amanda]

This one time in kindergarten, we (being the class) were at a petting farm of some sort. I had popcorn that I was allowed to feed to them. I happened to come across a goat and proceeded to feed it. Not wanting to waste of all of my feed on a stupid goat, I decided to stop and walk away. The goat was having none of that. It decided to back me up at a considerably intimidating pace (I was only 5) and was able to bully the rest of my feed away for its own devourment.

I don't much care for goats.

[Aaron]

I've never run away from edible fowl, but I have been in the opposite situation. Chickens are f*@$ing hard to catch! :)

[Caolionn]

I am so happy to know I am not the only nutter with ridiculous phobias.