Along the Way

ALONG THE WAY Isn't It Time We Started Talking Turkey?

Gene Mason left his tour-ticket-selling job at the Grand Canyon and went to work as security chief for the Nevada Club in Laughlin, Nevada, just across the Colorado River from Bullhead City. We had been pals at the Canyon. I dropped by the Nevada Club to visit him one day and saw a placard on the wall that read, "How can you soar with eagles when you have to work with turkeys?" If Gene had known as much about turkeys as Ben Franklin did - and I do - he would not have put himself down like that. Although I may have more experience with turkeys than Ben Franklin accumulated, he regularly gets quoted for efforts to get the big bird eulogized as the national symbol. Thomas Jefferson went up against Ben with the bald eagle and won.

Ben argued that the bald eagle was a "bird of bad moral character," meaning the eagle will eat carrion and fish, sometimes kill small furry animals, and has bad breath. Although I've never smelled the breath of either, I suspect the turkey's is not like that at all. Mainly they live on acorns, seeds, fruits, isolated insects, and other good things found in the forest. That may account for the turkey being highly desired on the platter, especially at Thanksgiving, while nobody wants to eat an eagle.

My personal interest in turkeys began when I lived at the Grand Canyon, where I had various jobs. Among the more important were stints as a Fred Harvey guide and Kaibab National Forest fireguard. Both of these pursuits put me into turkey territory. Eagles are notoriously skittish when man comes around, but nowhere near as skittish as turkeys. Sometimes I wasn't even sure I had seen a turkey, maybe just a turkey mirage.

One morning, a mile or so after I had turned off East Rim Drive onto the Grand View Tower road, the sun probed into a pretty little open spot in the forest, and the simple primeval beauty of it brought me to a stop. I poured some coffee from my thermos into a cup, walked a few yards into the scene, and sat with my back against a deadfall. I looked at nothing in particular, sort of absorbing the entire vista. Suddenly there was movement out about 75 feet: a turkey hen walked into the opening. Our eyes locked, and without hurrying she stepped behind a red-barked ponderosa about halfway between us. She never came into view on the other side.

After a few seconds, I raced to my side of the tree and, feeling rather foolish, looked around it and fast-scanned 180 degrees. No turkey was to be seen. I looked up into the branches ofthe tree. No turkey. Then into the branches of nearby trees. No turkey. I ran around the tree several times counterclockwise to see if she might be pulling a trick by staying on the opposite side of the tree from me, then I switched directions, in what you might call a "surprise move." No turkey.

Suddenly I was thinking about dinosaurs and their small brains in relation to the size of the turkey's head and whatit contained. I arrived at no real conclusion, but went away with a great deal of respect for how effectively the turkey used what gray matter it had; and wondering if it were possible to transplant turkey brain tissue into drivers who feel that using turn signals on vehicles should be optional.

Now having been eyeball to eyeball with the Real Thing, I felt compelled to pit my craftiness against the turkey's craftiness. After all, Thanksgiving was coming up.

My wife, Vicki, and I sat near Hull Tank, and I worked a "scratcher," a turkey call. I must have done something that sounded like Richard Gere in one of his spendthrift romantic moods because a dozen hens came within a few yards of us. I dropped one with a single shot from the double barrel and passed the gun to Vicki, whispering in a high-pitched voice, "Shoot, shoot." But she hesitated, and since you now know as much about turkeys as I do, you know what happened. But, remarkably, I was able to call them back into range, and when she didn't pull the trigger again, I asked, "Why didn't . . . you . . . shoot?"

She said, "I didn't see any I liked." Vicki was hunting turkeys the same way she hunts shoes.

Each year the Associated Press compiles a list of negative and sometimes nutty newsmakers, e.g. Saddam Hussein, and defines them as turkeys, which, as you now know, is a compliment. Ben Franklin and I would have called them bald eagles.