Doug Blough

The bittersweet shadows of Valentine’s Day surround us, and it’s a good time to remember “Birds do it; bees do it; even turkeys apparently do it …” That of course is slightly-altered lyrics from an age-old classic sung by the likes of Doris Day, Perry Como and, most recently, Black Sabbath.

I turkeyed up the lyrics because of a tragic loss I recently recalled from years ago that you never saw in the newspaper or obituaries.

But first, a word about the proverbial birds and the bees and modern parenting, which graphically educates kiddies when they’re barely out of diapers. It wasn’t always that way — I never even saw Mom and Dad kiss, much less talk about sex. I did hear it on the playground in junior high, but refused to believe it and told my stud buddy Jerry Salley he was crazy.

When I got home from school, I approached Mom preparing supper and told her the gross story Jerry told me about a man and woman having to do something together to make a baby. I’ll never forget Mom fidgeting nervously and not even making eye contact when she said, “Don’t listen to those boys.” Thus I was further stunted and I’m still sketchy on many aspects of it all.

When my niece Amber was around 12, she announced, “A boy named Billy kissed me today.” I asked, “So where did he kiss you, Amber?” and she answered, “On the playground.” I whispered to her dad, Paul (coincidentally my brother at the time), “Wonder what part they’re calling ‘the playground’ these days?”

It’s just that kind of inappropriate comment that’s made me a pariah at family, religious gatherings over the years, but if you think Valentine’s Day is only for mere mortals, you don’t grasp Mother Nature’s perfect plan.

True love is alive and well among the beasts, birds and stinging insects. The turkey is no exception, and I’m told often fall into love at first sight. What might seem like gobbledygook to you might be, “You have a magnificently hung wattle. I believe the wattle is the window to the soul. What say we go back to my coop and make some feathers fly?”

It was years ago when a breathtaking, popular turkey was found tragically flattened on a local roadway, quite possibly dying of a broken heart (aided by the two-ton vehicle running over its head, of course). It was the equally breathtaking and popular Pam Noessner — on the Humane Society board of directors with me at the time — that told me the gut-wrenching account.

Over the course of at least two years, Pam and her husband Werner had observed this turkey waddling up and down a stretch of South Fork road near the old Purvis place. She came to think of this noble bird as a familiar friend and they conjectured on what compelled — we’ll call him “Tom” — to roam this same stretch of highway so doggedly.

Did he have a female turkey (turkette) lover killed on or near that bridge? Did his grief prevent him from leaving the area where crows eventually consumed the carcass of his beloved? Or did she simply run off, possibly with one of those cocky, strutting French peacocks, leaving no note or explanation? And then one sad day, Pam noticed this endearing, mysterious gobbler lying dead by the side of the road.

Obviously someone had run over him, and I say “him” based on obvious assumption. The Noessners weren’t positive of its gender and it’s considered rude and disrespectful in both human and fowl cultures to stop and examine a slain pedestrian’s genitalia just out of curiosity. But even in the turkey world, the female would rarely grieve and remain single that long. Like its human counterpart, the female tends to move on much quicker than the un-romantic, but loyal male. She loves deeper, but he loves longer.

I can’t help but wonder if on the fateful day of that lovesick turkey’s demise, ol’ George Jones sang from Heaven, “He stopped lo-o-oving her today; they placed some corn upon the bridge. Soon they’ll carry him away … he stopped loving her-r-r today?”