Remember that old commercial, “It’s not nice to fool
Mother Nature?” Well, as a young child of about 12, I found out
first-hand why you shouldn’t fool Mother Nature. We had chickens,
turkeys, geese, and ducks; one of my jobs was to gather the eggs
except for the ones that my parents wanted to be left to sit and hatch
out babies. I, being 12 and easily bored, decided it would be
interesting to do a little egg switching. Dumb birds, they couldn’t
tell the difference between their eggs and any of the other birds’
eggs, so I put a turkey egg under the momma goose, a duck egg under a
momma chicken, snickering to myself everyday how dumb these birds
were, I mean the momma chicken didn’t notice that the duck egg was
three times bigger than hers!
Well, I laughed then, but I got a big pay back from
Mother Nature after the eggs hatched. At first, it was just so
hilarious to see Momma Chicken with her brood of baby chicks and one
baby duck and Momma Goose with her babies including one turkey… but it
wasn’t hilarious for long. I soon discovered that the joke was on me.
When the baby geese got big enough to start going for their swims,
baby turkey also went for his swim - big problem since turkeys can’t,
and therefore don’t, swim. My Mother firmly told me that since I was
the bright one who put the turkey egg under Momma Goose, it was my
responsibility to make sure my “turkey goose” did not drown. Seems
like every time I found something fun or interesting to do, Momma
Goose decided it was time for her and the kids to go for a swim. Off
I’d have to go, trekking after them, to the pond, wading in and
pulling out Mister Turkey Goose.
While Mister Turkey Goose was little and cute, it was
just an inconvenience, but as he grew into full turkey-hood, he got to
be rather hard to rescue, not to mention rather mad that I keep
pulling him out of the pond every time he and his brother and sister
geese went swimming. For a turkey-goose, he got pretty smart about
finding different ways to sneak off when my back was turned, and for a
big, fat turkey, he sure could run. It also apparently really
cheesed-off Momma Goose when I wrestled with her turkey boy,
cheesed-off to the point that she would start honking, calling the
whole goose family - all 16 of them - to her defense. Being flogged by
the entire goose clan, several times each day, had me looking like I
had gotten the worst of a bad fight, all the time.
Now, what kid didn’t love any reason to jump in the
pond in the middle of the scorching hot summer days? Me, for one;
wrestling with some mad-hatter geese, wallowing in the pond ooze with
one big, mad turkey-goose, on those scorching hot days made the smell
of pond muck, and wet feathers fairly unpleasant. Of course, Momma
Goose went for more swims on hot days, so most of my twelfth summer
was spent running to the pond, pulling out a fighting-mad turkey and
being on the wrong end of a flock of mad-geese relatives. This had
become a full-time job, on top of my regular chores, and if I live to
be one hundred, I will never forget the sight of this huge turkey
wadding out to the middle of the pond, only to sink like a lead brick,
time, after time, after time.
I’d be in the middle of milking one of our dairy
goats, when I’d see Momma Goose, and family, headed for a swim, so off
I’d have to run. Then when I’d return all muddy and smelly, I’d have
to deal with the big mess Miss Goat created while waiting for me to
finish milking her. These messes ranged from tearing open every
feed-bag in sight, to eating the radio cord, to leaving out the front
door and finding my mother’s favorite flowers to eat or, worse yet,
finding all those garden goodies. Neither of my parents found even an
ounce of sympathy for me, in fact, these little mishaps only fueled
their lectures about how this was all my fault and all my
responsibility, adding more and more things to my list of chores.
When we started haying, it took me three times as long
with the drowning turkey trying to go for a swim. I tried penning
Mister Turkey Goose in with some single, good -looking turkey-gals
hoping he might find true love with one of them, but no, he did not
even like to be near another turkey, instead he fell in love with a
young goose-girl, strutting his fully-fanned turkey-butt around her
and rubbing his turkey-neck against hers. Guess what, Miss Goose fell
in love with Mister Turkey Goose and they became a pair of lovers who
liked to sneak off together for a little skinny-dipping without the
goose family, so this meant more trips a day to drag out a big,
stinky, mad, male turkey out of the water while a very, very angry
Miss-Goose-girlfriend honked, hissed, and flogged me. Geesh, this was
not so funny anymore, in fact, this was just plain sad. Seemed like
the lovers knew when my back was turned for even only a second, they
would giggle in their fowl way and head straight for the water.
I must admit that as bad as my summer seemed to turn
out, it was better than when cold weather set in. The water was no
longer cool, but downright frigid, the only time I got a break was
when the pond was completely frozen-over, but of course, that didn’t
last very long since I had to break the ice for the goats and pigs to
drink. Just a small hole in the frozen ice was enough of an
opportunity for Mister Turkey Goose to show off to his girlfriend.
He’d just jump right in that hole, feet first, and the promptly began
to sink, so here I’d go, pulling out this half frozen, stinking turkey
out. Miss Goose cut me no slack just because it was freezing cold.
Nope, she’d just bite me even harder. I then had to herd the extremely
angry lovers to the barn so Mister Turkey Goose could dry off and warm
up, so his little toes didn’t freeze off.
