URL:
Unlike the ultra-domesticated ranch bird on your plate today, the wild turkey has a lot to be thankful for this year.
For one thing, it's not dead. What's more, it probably won't ever be anyone's meal.
This is saying quite a mouthful, so to speak, considering that the crafty critter that Benjamin Franklin wanted to name as the national bird almost didn't make it anywhere close to the millennium.
Hunted and otherwise displaced to the brink of extinction in the United States just a few decades ago, the wild turkey is now being declared a bona fide comeback success story. So much a success, in fact, that it's also attaining that special status accorded to so few species that have almost died out: lovable pest.
But before we flap further, let's make one thing clear. That aromatic lump of previously feathered meat on your holiday platter bears no more resemblance to the wild turkey than a Porsche does to a Dodge van.
All those domestic turkeys strutting around poultry compounds aren't exactly stupid, ranchers say, but dull-witted is probably a kind description. They can't fly, and from hatching to hatchet, they rarely think beyond the food trough. With their breasts bred huge for maximum meat output, the males and females can't even get the right body parts close enough together to mate without human help.
Not so the wily wild turkeys.
They are ace fliers, ferocious lovers, and they cut a lean, rakish figure in cream-and-tan feathers -- rakish by bird standards, that is. These birds are so smart some hunters say they're harder to track than grizzlies.
They're virtually everywhere -- in Bay Area suburbs, hilly or flat, and, in fact, they can be found in 57 of the state's 58 counties. They're also very gregarious, if you're nice. Which, with the creatures being more plentiful than ever, has become a mild problem.
During last spring's mating season, swarms of love-crazed turkeys hassled visitors at the Rancho San Antonio Preserve in Santa Clara County, charging hikers and cars in a randy frenzy, trying to make love to or fight with anything that moved. At homes around Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County, flocks sometimes leave so many droppings around decks and backyard birdie water tanks -- that's swimming pools to you and me -- that residents squawk to the state fish and game rangers for help.
Flocks of as many as 30 birds have been known to hold up traffic outside Livermore and at California State University at Hayward, and for a couple of months last winter dozens of them defiantly set up shop on the campus soccer pitch.
Lucky they're so personable.
Even when they are pesky, most folks say, the wild turkey is still so entertaining that ``you just can't help but love it,'' said Joe Didonato, a wildlife specialist with the East Bay Regional Park District.
``They are as tough as nails, very intelligent, very social birds,'' said Didonato. ``They can live in anything from a desert to a forest, and people might think all they do is make that gobbling sound, but they actually have a full language all their own. They're even fun to watch when they strut around and spread their tail feathers.
``They're great birds.''
That gulping gobble imitated this time of year by schoolkids everywhere means various things, Didonato said -- but the turkey's main communication comes in clucks and yelps. Wild turkeys have calls for being lost, needing help, and all the other things important to creatures worried about being eaten by other creatures.
They have plenty of reason to worry, too, because everything that hunts -- foxes, eagles, snakes and the like -- thinks turkeys taste as good as we think they do. Turkeys don't fight well, being more suited to eating grasshoppers, grass and seeds, so the big thing they do is fly and run.
``And boy, can they run,'' Didonato said. ``The average turkey takes about 60,000 steps a day, and it can outrace just about anything.'' At top trot, they hit 30 mph.
Their wing power is impressive too: They flap to 30 mph without breaking a sweat, and reach 80 mph in a power dive.
The only disadvantage, if you can call it that, is that at an average of 20 pounds, they are about 10 pounds lighter than their domestic cousins. So there's less meat.
The scrawniness didn't blunt Ben Franklin's enthusiasm back in the 1700s, though. Not only did he appreciate the bird's intelligence, beautiful bronze-and-white feathers, and tasty usefulness, he noted how during its mating tizzy the turkey head alternately turns red, white and blue.
Trouble was, that same head is a wrinkled, ugly lump only a turkey mom could love, compared with the more stately and fierce-looking bald eagle. So the turkey lost out on the title, and the rest is history -- including the heavy hunting of the turkey that ensued over the next two centuries, and the logging of its natural hardwood forest habitat, which led to the bird's nadir in 1930.
By the Great Depression, there were only 30,000 wild turkeys left in the United States, down from 2 million when the pilgrims came in the early 1600s. Alarmed biologists and hunters undertook a number of rescue attempts: A hunting excise tax was enacted in 1937 to raise cash to revive the turkey, and the campaign started to catch hold in the late 1950s.
From then, it was slow but steady progress until the mid-1990s, when naturalists finally began to breathe easy. Today there are more than 5 million wild turkeys in the United States, which is still a far cry fewer than the 300 million domestic turkeys bred each year -- but then the wild ones aren't destined for today's forks. Because of the turkeys' sensitive status the severely limited U.S. hunting season is only a few weeks in the spring and fall.
California's wild turkey, introduced as a nonnative bird in 1877, was nearly extinct in the 1970s. But by the 1990s it had come back. The state now has about 150,000, roosting just about every place where people aren't -- and even where they are.
That's what gets them in trouble. Wild turkeys, which never migrate, are prevalent all year in Bay Area hilly spots such as Sunol, Mount Diablo and in Del Valle Regional Park outside Livermore. And in true California fashion, where there are hills there are houses.
``The biggest problem is when people get too friendly,'' said Scott Gardner, a state Department of Fish and Game biologist specializing in wild turkeys. ``People like to see them run around and hear them gobble, so they feed them.
``And once you do that, they're like stray cats. You can't get rid of them.''
Hence the trouble on the east side of Danville near Mount Diablo a few years ago when the mayor got so worked up by turkey droppings and early-morning cacklings around his house that he asked the state to get rid of the local flocks. No way, the state animal and bird cops said -- and that was just fine with a lot of the neighbors.
``They're still here, squawking and gobbling every day in our back yard, and we love it,'' said Danville resident Jack Cohen. ``They wake us up every morning and my wife and I just look at each other and smile.''
Cohen and his neighbor, Richard Warrington, said a 30-bird flock has been pecking around the block for years. They sleep in the oak trees at night and trot through the open spaces and backyards by day to dine on weeds, bugs and berries.
``I find them totally entertaining,'' said Cohen. `They're truly beautiful birds.''
Didonato of the park district finds them to be more than that. He finds them mighty tasty, too.
Didonato's job is to make sure the sprawling park district's several hundred wandering wild turkeys are safe and unmolested, and he personally knows every roost. But once a year he allows himself a closer relationship to the species -- in a dinner sort of way.
Last weekend, he went up to a friend's private land near Clear Lake, startled a flock into fleeing in front of his 12-gauge shotgun barrel, and voila: He had his Thanksgiving meal, feathers and all.
It was no easy feat. Wild turkeys have peripheral vision of about 240 degrees, and even the eyeblink of an otherwise motionless hunter can send them wheeling away. It took two days of heavy slogging through the weeds before Didonato bagged his 12-pound hen.
``It was worth every minute,'' Didonato said with a happy sigh. ``It's going to be very tasty.''
WILD TURKEY TRIVIA California counties where they are found: 57 (San Francisco is only exception) States where they are found: 49 (Not Alaska) . Population statewide: About 150,000 . Population nationwide: About 5 million . All-time low, 1930 30,000 . Population in the 1600s, when the Pilgrims landed: About 2 million . Year Introduced Into California: 1877 . Average weight: 10 to 15 pounds . Cruising flight speed: 30 mph . Average life: 12 years . Gobbling: Only males do it.