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?

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.

On Boys Being Boys

I took my leave of #5 on Sunday at a Scout camp somewhere in the pretty part of New Jersey. For the first time ever, he wouldn’t hug me goodbye.

He’s a month shy of eleven. I’m pretty sure that he would have hugged me goodbye had he not been surrounded by other similarly-aged boys.

However, he was, and he didn’t.

It happened like this:

Me: So, hey bud, I’m gonna take off now, ok?

#5: {turns away from me, jams fists in pockets and kicks the ground} Bye.

Me: {torn between trying not to cry from my heart breaking and trying not to laugh out loud at his transparency} Bye. See you next week.

And I drove over an hour back home alone, contemplating this stage he has entered into:

Little-big.

He can still fold himself up into small spaces: under CC’s arm on the couch for movie time, in between CC and I when we’re napping, into a tiny sliver of his twin-sized bed when I read him Harry Potter, behind furniture so he can jump out and scare his sisters. But gone are the days when his face and my elbows were the same exact the height and he was always getting whacked in the eye from hovering behind me in the kitchen. His pants are all at least three inches too short, and he can hide his candy on the second-highest shelf in the pantry.

He was still four years old for a couple days when he began kindergarten. We debated whether to start him or keep him out, but his mind was so ready. He pulled out pads of paper when his sisters were at school and played school by himself. He covered our driveway with the powers of ten in chalk and when he ran out of driveway, used the neighbor’s next door. Starting him in school also guaranteed he’d be around other boys. He’s a little outnumbered in our house. It was definitely the right decision for him, but it did take a while to catch up socially.

He’s totally caught up. He’s making up for lost time.

He’s digging holes, building forts with zip lines to and from, riding his bike on a ramp that has broken the wrists of three friends, and “accidentally” kicking over nests of ground bees; he’s pulling snapping turtles out of the lake, always looking out for ways to earn a buck, and getting in trouble for pushing his boundaries. A lot. With friends. In short, he’s being a boy. Rejection is inevitable.

Back at the camp, I didn’t force a hug out of him, though I was caught totally off guard. I felt like I was in middle school again when suddenly the boy I was “going” with wouldn’t talk to me in front of his friends. Someone wisely suggested to me that I switch to the goodbye fist bump; it’s the best I’m gonna get out of him until he graduates high school. When he’s way past Little-big.

This camp allows no electronic devices, not even radios. It’s one of the reasons we sent him there. I can’t reassure ~~him~~ myself with a goodnight text. I think he must be homesick. Then I laugh at my own transparency.

Being a stepmom gives me an edge in handling the rejection. After all, it isn’t as if all five kids accepted me wholeheartedly from the get-go; as the Roger Clyne song goes, “I’ve seen a slammin’ door a time or two before.”

But there is one thing I really wish I could tell him this week, right now while he’s there. One thing I really wish he knew, and it’s killing me that I can’t. If I could text him, I’d say this:

Dude. I just found out: they filmed the first Friday the 13th movie at your camp. Chh-chh-chh ahh-ahh-ahh. Lookout!