Scat to the Rafters

My neighborhood is overloaded with wild turkey. The bird, that is, not the pathetic brown liquor that masquerades as bourbon. They nest behind my house. One could see this as a commentary on my gardening skills. There is rather a lot of overgrown brush for them to nest safely and comfortably in… though I prefer the terms “lush” and “verdant”.

In addition to ground nesting they roost in my trees, usually during raccoon and badger hours. Some people believe wild turkeys can’t fly and wonder how they get up there. Wild turkeys do fly. They fly like they’re drunk. Perhaps on real bourbon.

There are ten now, but there used to be twelve. Two chicken-sized babies died on the same day in my driveway and I wondered for a long time after if they fell or were pushed. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. I have a hard enough time with five and mine are old enough to forage for their own food.

They roost on a certain branch directly over my driveway and thus, my cars. One car is way more in the strike zone than the other.

For a long time we vied with daughter #1 for the prime parking spot and CC finally had to issue her a decree: YOU park on the turkey poop side.

Then #1 moved out and we had to reissue the decree to daughter #2.

Last week because I was lazy, I parked in the spot behind #2’s car hoping it was out of turkey poop range. It wasn’t. In the morning when I went out to run errands, I noticed the poop. It was hard not to. I figured I’d take the car to the car wash after I went grocery shopping. Then I sat down in the driver’s seat and decided, based on my view, going grocery shopping first was not an option.

Car Wash Guy: ¡Dios mío!

Me: Turkeys.

Guy: Turkeys?

Me: Branch over my driveway.

Guy: Big Turkeys.

Me: Big branch.

Guy: I give extra pre-wash.

I got the $13 wash and tipped them $7.

The next day CC had to drive the other car and headed, first thing and for the same reason, to the same car wash.

Me: Did the car wash guy say anything?

CC: No. He just sighed, and turned on the hose.

I’m not entirely sure how #2 is oblivious to and unbothered by turkey poop, but she is. The very day after CC took that car to the car wash, it was covered again. He issued a new decree to #2: YOU hose this off, or the damn turkeys can cost YOU twenty bucks a day.

And then he began Operation Turkey Roost Removal.

I’m not going to post pictures of this, for fear of people thinking we actually conduct ourselves at work this way. It involved an extension ladder, an extension trimmer, and me being called out as a witness only. He declined my offer to foot the ladder because, he said, “I may need to jump out of the way and I don’t want to jump on you.”

Turned out he was right.

At work I told some of my city-dwelling co-workers that CC cut down the turkey roosting branch and they responded with “Awww! Poor turkeys!” and I was all, “No, you don’t understand!”

And nobody does, unless turkeys roost in a branch over some part of your property or you work in a car wash. So I’m educating you: Turkey poop isn’t like normal bird poop. It has density. It has substance. It’s somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball. A turkey poops a lot. Ten turkeys, on a branch hanging over your car, poop ten times that amount. On your car.

You’re welcome.

The conversation with my co-workers begat the question, “What do you call a group of turkeys? Are they a flock?” While there is some debate as to whether these names are wild or domestic specific, turkeys are either a flock or a rafter.

This was discovered via the interwebz, along with many other weird names for groups of animals that make me ridiculously happy:

I knew about a murder of crows, but had never heard of the unkindness of ravens. I wish like hell that I work that into a story without coming off like a complete douchebag.

An ostentation of peacocks, a kaleidoscope of butterflies, and a romp of otters are aptly named.

A troubling of goldfish, a pounce of cats, and a rookery of penguins are among my favorites.

But the hands-down winner? A business of ferrets.

What are your favorites?

I Love the DMV. You Heard Me.

I have a history of missing important automobile expiration dates: registration, insurance, inspection… it’s an embarrassing habit that I should have grown out of some time ago.

It is one thing to get pulled over in Phoenix for driving on expired Texas plates when you just moved to Arizona and are in your twenties. It is quite another thing to get pulled over for expired plates after dropping your kids off at school in New Jersey when you’ve lived there for seven years and are over forty.

2013 is the first year that I managed to get all my vehicles registered on time. I was feeling, finally, like a real adult. Driving Miss Lucy (my ’66 Mustang) down the main drag in town I noticed an inspection sting set up on the other side of the road. It’s pretty common: they make you slow down and check your inspection sticker as you go by, and pull over violators. This caused me to check my sticker. Which had an expiration date of tomorrow.

Crap.

The DMV is its own circle of hell. I’m pretty sure it’s the 11th, right after the one containing clowns. But if we all hate it so much, consider the poor bastards that actually work there. That’s probably a hard job to love; definitely a hard job to stay positive in. You’re dealing with these cranky people all day long who can’t follow directions or get their shizz in on time…

I planned on lining up the next morning before they opened. But every time my alarm went off I thought about the DMV and hit snooze. I finally got up around 7:30, poured some coffee and looked up their 11th Circle of Hell Live Webcam. The line was already wrapped around to the entrance and they hadn’t even started inspecting yet. I started weighing how bad it would be if I blew it off. It’s a $200 ticket, but sitting in my yoga pants with a Puggle on my lap, I couldn’t bear the thought of heading over there. I always worry so much about if the car’s going to pass inspection or not.

Half an hour of reading blogs and Facebooking later, the page refreshed and there was no line. So I put Jack back on the bed, put on real pants, and headed out the door.

What I forgot was that the inspection station is a whole different vibe from the side where you get all the licensing and registration stuff taken care of. And at the DMV inspection station? I’m a rock star. Or, more correctly, my car is.

She's kind of a big deal. — She’s kind of a big deal.

They all remember Miss Lucy from two years ago when they last inspected her, and everyone comes over from their own bay to tell me a Mustang story–because everyone has a Mustang story.

One guy told me how his dad had a ’65 fastback. He let him drive it sometimes, but he’d have to spend a lot of time airing it out if he wanted to take a girl out because his dad smoked cigars. His dad later had an accident and actually died in the car. They did restoration afterwards but then put it up for sale; none of the kids wanted it after that. “My dad loved that car,” he said.

The guy who completed my inspection actually got a little weepy, shook my hand overlong and told me it brought back a lot of good memories. It seemed like he wanted to tell me some of them but realized the reality that we were standing in the inspection bay in the NJDMV. I understood in that moment that Miss Lucy is always going to pass inspection.

It got me to thinking: I bet there’s a market for classic car therapy. You know how animal therapy reaches certain people? And Art or Music or Dance or Drama therapy reaches certain other people? I think I could just take this car around and certain people– namely, middle-aged guys– would automatically feel better. They’d tell me about their dead fathers and their glory days, and the girl that got away. We’d go for a drive, maybe get an ice cream. I’d be covered by everyone’s insurance, make a nice little side income. I wonder how you’d get licensed for that.

Do you have a Mustang story?

The Truth About Lemon Drops

There’s a recipe I tore out of a magazine over a year ago and haven’t made yet. It’s for a lemon ice box pie that looks divine. The picture just screams summer, and every time I run across it in my recipes I think, I really want to make this pie!

It includes three of my favorite things on the planet: shortbread cookies, a certain type of greek yogurt that’s more fattening than ice cream, and lemon drops (candy in pies is kind of a midwest thing, much like tiny marshmallows in sweet potatoes).

I finally decided to make the pie. My first trip out for ingredients, I had a hard time finding the shortbread cookies. I had to search the whole cookie aisle like three times and by the time I found them, a bunch of other cookies had climbed into my basket as decoy cookies. They said it was so I didn’t eat the ones intended for the recipe. I’m not one to argue with a cookie.

In the aftermath of the cookie aisle fiasco, I forgot the yogurt. I also forgot the lemon drops. That night, I cracked open the shortbread.

The next day I went back to the store. By this time, I’d eaten half the shortbread, but figured there was still enough to make the recipe. I grabbed the yogurt, then was confronted with a horror in the candy aisle:

NO LEMON DROPS!

In fact, there was a total absence of any old-lady candy. No peppermints. No Brach’s sour balls. No Red Hots.

The next day I went to a different store for lemon drops (and shortbread, because we were out. Also decoy cookies). There were butterscotch balls and those gross neapolitan coconut squares, but no lemon drops. I replenished the cookies.

Next day, next store: There were root beer barrels, cinnamon balls, and those little bright blue mint balls, but no lemon drops. I bought a pint of Häagen-Dazs so I wouldn’t eat the yogurt.

Finally, as a last resort before mail-order, I made my way to the drug store in town with the largest candy section, and there they were: lemon drops. Finally. Thank god this place carries shortbread too.

I have always believed lemon drops to be the most innocent of all candy. I remember being able to choose them as my treat when we went to the movies when I was a little kid. They were great because they were sour enough that you didn’t need a lot. Your parents could shut you up for fifteen minutes with two of them.

The truth is that lemon drops have proven to be sort of a reverse gateway drug purely by their elusiveness. Tallying up all the extra shortbread, decoy cookies and ice cream I’ve had while searching for them, each serving of this pie is equal to approximately a month’s worth of calories. The pie that I still haven’t made. I can’t believe lemon drops turned on me. Did you ever have a candy turn on you? It feels like when my best friend in elementary school pretended to be mad at me. Not cool, lemon drops. Not cool.

At this point, maybe I should just dip a shortbread cookie in the yogurt, top it with a lemon drop, and call it good.