Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.
Like other wild birds, turkeys regularly show up on the deck of Mitchell cabin. We put out birdseed for smaller birds, and the turkeys try to horn in on the meal. The trouble is the turkeys will gobble it all up if they can, and they scare off the other birds. Perhaps worst of all, they leave behind huge droppings.
Benjamin Franklin disapproved of bald eagles being named our national bird, and there has long been a myth that he wanted the turkey to replace the bald eagle as our national bird. In fact, he merely compared the eagle to a turkey to denigrate the eagle. The myth grew out of a letter Franklin wrote his daughter in which he complained that the “bald eagle…is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly…[He] is too lazy to fish for himself.”
Even the turkey, Franklin wrote, is “a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America…He is besides — though a little vain and silly — a bird of courage.”
I’m glad that no one actually proposed making turkeys our national bird because Lynn and I are forever having to shoo them off our deck.
Despite our shooing, turkeys only momentarily stop showing up.
Wild turkeys are native to the Midwest and East Coast, as well as Canada and Mexico — but not to California. They got here in the 1950s when the state Department of Fish and Game, as it was then named, released some in the Napa Valley as prey for hunters.
In 1988, a few from the Napa Valley flock were transported to Loma Alta Ranch overlooking the San Geronimo Valley. Before long that small flock expanded to the valley floor and by the year 2000 had spread throughout West Marin.
The view from Mitchell cabin.
They can also be a nuisance in other ways. In an extreme case, a turkey in February 2005 blacked out the town of Tomales.
Turkeys are not great flyers, and turkeys in Tomales had taken to gliding off a steep slope to get across Highway 1.
On one occasion, a turkey misjudged the height of some powerlines and flew into them. Two 12,000-volt lines slapped together, causing an explosion with a bright flash.
The explosion surprisingly did not kill the turkey. It fell to the ground and started wandering around in dazed circles. Resident Walter Earle, who saw the flash, immediately called the county fire department to report, “Some turkey just took out the powerlines.” Fire Capt. Tom Nunes later said he at first assumed Earle was talking about a drunk driver. The blackout lasted four hours.
Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.
Lynn at Taps Restaurant beside the river in Petaluma.
A friend this week was telling my wife Lynn on the phone that she’s looking for a job. “What are you looking for?” Lynn asked and was startled by her friend’s answer: “It could be any of several possibilities. I’m trying to keep a fuck-the-bull attitude for the moment.”
“What’s a fuck-the-bull attitude?” Lynn asked with trepidation, wondering if it were some new slang, and it was then her friend’s turn to be startled: “I said a flexible attitude.” Laughter ensued. (Lynn’s hearing was tested recently; it’s almost perfect.)
Yours truly reading the Taps menu before ordering a Belgian ale and pulled pork. (Photo by Lynn Mitchell)
A poetry journal, The Advocet, just published two of Lynn’s poems, Bird Watching and Between Tides, and both of us received our second Covid-19 vaccinations three weeks ago, so last Friday we decided to celebrate both accomplishments with an outdoor meal at Taps Restaurant and Tasting Room. The food is first rate, and the restaurant’s location beside the Petaluma River is enchanting despite being downtown.
__________________________
Photo bombing?
Actress Paris Hilton shows up during the 2013 kangaroo-mating season in Australia.
Photobombing, the mischievous trick of injecting oneself into someone else’s picture by unexpectedly popping up just as the photo is snapped, is hardly new. Holding up two fingers behind an unwitting subject’s head is a longstanding prank. The question in this photo is who was photobombing whom: Paris and a companion imitating two amorous kangaroos or the two photobombing Paris’ affection for her marsupial companion?
____________________________
Time Zone Politics
Benjamin Franklin is often credited with dreaming up the idea of the Daylight Saving Time in 1784 as a joke.
This year’s Daylight Saving Time has now been in effect three weeks, which brings up a few odd facts about it.
As our schoolmarm taught us, it’s Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight’s Saving Time, although the latter is widely misused. Think of it this way: the word Saving is being used as a noun, and Daylight is, in this case, an adjective modifying it. The same would hold true in the phrase “a money saving plan” where money is being used as an adjective describing the type of saving plan.
Some odd exceptions: The March 2019 Old Farmers Almanac noted, Daylight Saving Time is observed nationwide except in “American Samoa, most of Arizona, Guam, Hawaii, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands….
“The Germans were the first to officially adopt the light-extending system in 1915 as a fuel-saving measure during World War I. The British switched one year later, and the United States followed in 1918, when Congress passed the Standard Time Zone Act, which established our time zones.” In 1920, the law “was repealed due to opposition from dairy farmers (cows don’t pay attention to clocks). During World War II, Daylight Saving Time was imposed again.”
