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A Majesty in Feathers |
| Written by Sivadasan Channar Madhavan | |
| Wednesday, 19 March 2008 | |
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A MAJESTY IN FEATHERS By Sivadasan Channar
It was late in the summer of 1995. It had been a week since I saw the wild turkey family. Then, I saw the hen with her young chicks, all the seven of them, crossing my driveway. I was coming home in the afternoon. I stopped my car a little beyond a hundred feet from the caravan, and I got out. Usually, they were not very afraid of me as long as I kept my distance. She and her mate had known me for over three years, and many times I was able to get within fifteen or twenty feet before they would move off. Our friendship began three years ago when the pair decided to settle down in the woods behind my house. In times of food shortages such as in the middle of the winter, I was a reliable source for their daily meals. I always had several large bags of dried corn from the feed store just for them. This time, she seemed to be afraid of me and hurriedly ran off with her brood and disappeared. It was Mr. Charly Penford, my friend from the VA wild life preserve, who suggested that corn was an easy way to save them from starvation in the winter. I had told him about the wild turkey couple residing somewhere in the woods behind my house. He taught me that the wild turkeys were quite smart, unlike their domesticated cousins. They had very acute senses, and could easily discriminate between friends and foes. That included the humans. My youngest son, Aaron, named them Harry and Louise, the characters from the anti-Hillary Clinton universal health plan commercial from 1993. There was no particular connection between the names and the turkeys. He thought the names were catchy, and that the turkeys had star quality. He had come home for a few days on leave from the Marine Corps. He was out in the back yard looking for a lost football in the tall grass, where he and a few of his friends were playing touch football earlier in the afternoon. They lost the ball and then decided to quit their game. It was a couple of hours before dark, and he saw the pair fly off. He never thought wild turkeys could fly. "Dad, did you know that wild turkeys can fly, almost like the ducks? I saw two of them in the tall grass out in the back." "Yes, I know. They are pretty smart too. You must have seen my friends." "Dad, I am not talking about your buddies! I really saw two wild turkeys in our back yard. They were in the tall grass and I ran into them while looking for my football." He was serious. "I know. They are the friends I meant, not the other turkeys wearing suits." I chuckled. "They have been around for two seasons now. I feed them in the winter, and so they moved into our woods. I also stopped cutting the grass in the fields. They love the tall grass, and eat the bugs and the grass seeds. Above all, I don't let the nuts with the guns come in here shooting up all living things for the fun of it." "Dad, be careful. You are alone here, and some of the Rednecks around here are crazy. Don't forget, I went to school with some of them. Please don't go and argue with a gun." His anxiety showed. "Aaron, they all know I have a Marine for a son. I will tell them that you will beat the crap out of them if they even touched me." I laughed. Since my divorce couple of years ago, I was living alone in our isolated house in rural Stafford County in Virginia. I owned twelve acres, deep inside from the road. My nearest neighbor was a good mile away. Occasionally, I regretted my isolation. Overall, I enjoyed the solitude and the hundreds of acres of heavy woods around my property. Apart from couple of acres of cleared fields, everything was dense woods. There were plenty of wild lives all around. I met the young pair of turkeys early in the spring of 1993 behind my house. There was still some snow left on the ground from a late snowstorm the previous week. I had gone for an early morning walk through the woods to watch the progress of the beavers in the little pond out in the back. They were determined to build a dam across the Aqua creek. I figured that they wanted to enlarge the pond to prevent it from going dry in the summer. On my way back, I saw the pair of turkeys for the first time. They were slightly bigger than full-grown chickens and seemed to be couple of yearlings. Obviously it was a Tom and a Hen. He was already a few inches taller than his mate. His feathers were already more colorful than her mundane grey shade. His tail feathers were quite long, almost like those of a peacock. I had seen pictures of wild Tom turkeys with their tail spread into a fan. They were very majestic looking, I thought. I wondered whether he would spread his fan for me while I waited. We had been living in that house for nearly ten years, and this was the first time I saw any wild turkeys. I was mesmerized by the two birds and just stood there watching them for nearly five minutes before they sensed my presence. As soon as they saw me, they disappeared into the woods like a flash of light. Throughout the spring, I saw them often in my field. They always preferred the section where the grass was tall. I stopped mowing the fields to give them more space and as soon as the weather turned cold, I began the corn distribution. The next spring, they showed up with couple of trailing chicks. The parents seemed to be showing their babies their range. I also thought they brought them for my benefit. By the end of the year, the chicks, now fully grown, disappeared one day. The breeding pair stayed on and they continued to visit my backyard every day. The dried corn was much appreciated, it seemed. Eventually they began to recognize the source of the food. They recognized me as a reasonably harmless thing as long as I was in their view. Last year, in 1994, they had five chicks, and as before, the grown chicks vanished sometimes in November. I never figured it out where they went. Aaron thought that perhaps they wound up on some of the neighborhood tables on Thanksgiving Day. "All the five of them on the same day?" I was doubtful. After Aaron went back to his Marine base, Twenty-nine Palms, in California, I resumed my lonely existence. Last spring, Harry and Louis were the proud parents of seven chicks. I never discovered where they had their nest, and how they hid themselves and the eggs from the predators. I had seen an occasional fox or two in the fields. The adult birds could fly well, at least for short distances, to reach high branches of trees. How the mother protected the chicks was still a mystery. The kind of devotion she had, I was sure she would never fly away to a tree branch at night, leaving her babies helpless at night. The tall grass in the small field behind my house was the main foraging area for the whole family. The steady supply of corn and other bird feeds kept them as my regular visitors. It was in May when I got my German shepherd puppy, Sasha. She was about six weeks old, and the friendliest thing you could ever meet. Every living creature except squirrels was her friend. She hated squirrels from the very first day. Almost like "Hatred at first sight". I used to allow her roam through the fields and one day she saw Harry and his family, and quickly went to investigate. Harry was not interested and they all ran off. Sasha was disappointed at the brush off. It was amazing how Harry knew that Sasha was just a puppy, too young to be of any threat. However, he did not like any close encounter with her even though he wasn't afraid of her. They all had the confidence that they could out run her any time. Sasha used to lie on the edge of the field and watch the birds with absolute fascination. She couldn't quite figure out what those funny looking creatures were. She must have figured the young chicks to be good enough to be some additional playmates. One day, in her enthusiasm, she decided to take a chance and meet the flock. Her puppy fur was the same color as the summer grass. She was about eight inches tall and was soon engulfed by the tall grass. Without Harry's knowledge, Sasha got right behind him. Suddenly noticing the puppy, he stiffened up, fluffed up his feathers and turned around. Without any warnings, he suddenly stretched and gave Sasha a sharp peck on her face. She cried in agony and ran back to hide behind me. She looked at me as if saying, "Daddy, that thing there tried to kill me." Harry stood there looking thoroughly pleased at his successful defense of his territory. In the three years I watched them, the young turkeys had matured into a magnificent pair who considered my backyard as their very own private domain. Harry was very handsome with the most intense color of shiny black with brown streaks and white specs. Louis was plumper but still was couple of inches shorter than Harry. She had grey feathers with white specs, and a much shorter tail. It was obvious that Louise admired her mate. They were confident about their safety in the field as I used to see them around the woods throughout the day. Sasha never bothered them after her first encounter. She would sit and watch the birds, but not even once did she go anywhere near them. One afternoon, early in summer, I saw three young men walking along my driveway as I was coming home. They seemed to be in their late teens. It was a private driveway through the middle of my property. I got out of my pickup truck and asked the boys what they were doing there. One of them had a shotgun. They gave me some excuse that they were hunting for squirrels and thought they were on their Uncle Banks's property. It was not very believable. My mailbox was right at the entrance and my name was on it. Madhavan does not look anything even remotely close to Banks. I told them it was OK to walk around the driveway, but there can be no hunting anywhere on my land. I told one of the boys that I recognized him from the house down the Road. It was a little bluff, but I wanted them to know that I knew where he lived. However, I also remembered Aaron's words. We briefly talked about their schools and football. I reminded them to be careful with the gun, and not to get hurt. Several days went by without any signs of the turkey family. It was way too early for the chicks to leave their parents. They were barely four or five months old. I sprinkled some extra corn in the backyard. Another week went by, and no sign of Harry or Louise. I began to worry whether something happened to them. That was when I had the quick sighting of the mother and the chicks crossing the driveway. I wasn't sure whether Harry was ahead of the family as he usually did. It was a great relief to see them even though Louise moved very fast into the woods. The corn in the backyard still remained untouched. Saturday morning, I went down to the creek to inspect the beavers' work as I usually did. They had piled the tree limbs and mud by another foot. They did such intricate yet sturdy work that rivaled anything man could do. And they did not use any tools or masonry. The result was remarkable, a solid dam across the creek. Now the water had to come into the pond before it could flow out downstream. The initial pond was about half an acre. One more rainy season, and the pond would grow to over an acre, and there would be water in it throughout the year. What more could one ask for? I wondered what their next project would be. I walked along the creek to the culvert that was part of the new access road of my neighbor behind my property. This was always easier than climbing up nearly fifty feet through the thick brush. At this time of the year, the thorn bushes were in full growth and they did not provide a very safe footpath. I saw some large feathers by the side of the creek. The color looked familiar, black with brown streaks and white specks. Then I noticed a large dark object on the other side of the culvert, partially under water. My heart sank as I got near. My God, it was Harry. My friend Harry, the healthy, bold and crafty four-year-old Harry. I pulled him out of the mud and water. His magnificent athletic body was covered in dried blood. I noticed the huge gaping hole on his side that went right through his chest. A bullet hole, there was no mistake about it. He was an innocent victim of a killer who killed just for the fun of it. It looked like someone killed him, and then kicked his body into the creek. Could any of the three boys I met early in the summer be the killer? Or was it one of the many in the neighborhood who regularly rode around in their trucks with their guns above their rear windows. I took off my jacket and carefully wrapped Harry in it and brought him home. He was too graceful a creature to lie there under the culvert and decay in the mud. He was a majesty in feathers who reined over his territory, and that was where he belonged. I dug a hole in the field where he lived and buried him as lovingly as I would bury a dear friend. Sasha and I went to the creek, collected some round rocks, and placed them over his grave. I knew why Louise did not want anything to do with me. She trusted me, but still her beloved was killed for no reason. I wondered how much she must have missed him. How much must have been her grief? Whom could she turn to for comfort? Did the killer with the gun ever felt such pain? Now she had to raise her family all by herself. How could she know that it was not I, who was the killer? How could she ever trust a two-legged animal that is part of the same species as the wanton killer? I remembered reading somewhere about a pair of morning doves. They used to roost on the ledge of a building in some city. One day a cruel boy threw a stone, which struck and killed the male. The female refused to leave the ledge and stayed close to her dead mate, even after his body decayed and turned into a heap of feathers. Then one day she was found dead, next to the remains of her long gone mate. Love and devotion are not exclusively human emotions. Now when I look out, I see the pile of rocks instead of one of Nature's beautiful creatures that used to stand in the same spot. Harry, you were a noble creation, and you enriched my life much beyond mere words.
Copyright 2008 Sivadasan Channar Madhavan |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 19 March 2008 ) |
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