328 animal, vegetable, miracle
ways in our barnyard, we applied the Coolidge effect, separating either
Big Tom or Bad Tom with a new hen each day in the romantic barn room
while the other tom chased the rest of the girls around the pasture. We
had to keep the boys apart from one another, not so much because they
fought (though they did), but because any time one of them managed to
mount a hen, the other would charge like a bowling ball down the lane
and topple the lovers most ungracefully, ka-pow. Nothing good was going
to come of that.
But after the February of Love dawned over our barnyard, it was fol-
lowed by the March of the Turkey Eggs. We hoped this was good, al-
though the first attempts looked like just one more wreck along the
love-train track. It’s normal for a young bird to need a few tries, to get her
oviduct work in order. But to be honest I didn’t even recognize the fi rst
one as an egg. I went into the turkey coop to refill the grain bin and almost
stepped on a weird thing on the floor. I stooped down to poke at it: a pale
bag of fluid, soft to the touch, teardrop- shaped with a rubbery white cork-
screw at the pointy end. Hmmm. A small visitor from another planet? I
tentatively decided it was an egg, but did not uncork the champagne.
Soon, real eggs followed: larger and more pointed than chickens’ eggs,
light brown with a cast of reddish freckles. I was thrilled with the fi rst
few. Then suddenly they were everywhere, dropped coyly on the fl oor like
hankies: hither and yon about the coop, outside in the caged run, and
even splat on the grass of the pasture. When the urge struck these girls,
they delivered, like the unfortunate mothers one hears about having their
babies in restaurant foyers and taxicabs.
I had fashioned what I thought to be a respectable turkey nest on the
floor in one corner of the coop, but no one was using it. Clearly it didn’t
look right to them, maybe not cozy enough. We built a big wooden box
with open sides to set over the nest for protection. The turkeys roosted at
night on high rafters inside their coop, and always flew around rambunc-
tiously before going to bed. Bourbon Reds have wings and are not afraid
to use them. Maybe the nest on the floor would have more appeal, I rea-
soned, if I made it safe from aerial assault.
This struck some chord in the turkey psyche, but not the right one: the
hens immediately began laying eggs on top of the plywood platform, about