© Riki7
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What kind of candyass, anesthetized culture have we created when our species is at the mercy of wild turkeys? The reason we bring this up is because they finally caught that turkey that’s been grinding New Jersey Turnpike traffic to a halt the whole week. Forget the visual where one of the main arteries to the financial capital of global civilization is being blocked by something that feeds on acorns and bugs. This is bigger than that.
Suburbanized bien pensants from places like Seattle and Boston – we’re now talking about purse-lipped scolds use “self-actualization” non-ironically and think camping trips begin at REI – will lecture you endlessly about getting back to nature. But let them encounter an actual animal and they’ll flee in fear. They’re writing articles to each other on how to cope with being – quote – “terrorized” by wild turkeys. And then there’s this:
I have to admit, initially I was charmed. Turkeys! In Berkeley! How quaint! How colonial! Isn’t this communion with nature the very reason we moved to the hills? … That is, until the day we rounded a bend to find a gang of fowl marauders glaring at us as if to say, “What are you looking at, pal?” The birds had a good three inches on my girl. I stepped between her and them, and with a bright, “It’s O.K., honey,” which fooled neither avian nor child, hurried past. Since then, we’ve taken a different route to the swings.
Before we get to a video – which you have to watch at least through the minute mark – here’s Wikipedia’s entry on turkeys: “turkeys are very cautious birds and will fly or run at the first sign of danger.” Now you’re ready for this:
We are literally ceding territory and property to turkeys. It’s important to emphasize territory and property because they’ve been the central focus of struggle since the history of life itself. On a lower level they’re how we measure animal dominance in the wild. On a higher level they’re how we gauge the ebb and flow of entire civilizations and empires. We take your stuff: strength. You take our stuff: weakness. Territory and property are the markers of victory and defeat. And we’re losing them to turkeys.
So here’s how this is going to go. We’re not going to exagerate and advocate a turkey killing spree or anything like that. This is serious. If you see a turkey and it attempts to challenge you – that is, to remove you from its demarcated territory or to attack your biological offspring – simply refuse to give ground. Make a loud noise. Wave a stick. If need be, bluff charge. Tell it “no turkey, I am a human being and I’m eighteen or nineteen rungs above you on the evolutionary ladder, and so it is you that will have to yield.” If things get really nasty follow up with “… lest I kill you, stuff you, cook you, and eat you in order to convey to my status as an apex predator.” Seriously now.