Pesky Turkeys

My morning exercise today is apparently going to consist solely of shoo-ing the pesky wild turkeys off of the deck.  It's fine if they roam my yard and make a mess there.  But what is so attractive to them about my deck??  Their droppings are large and messy.  One would think that my repeated inhospitable arm waving and noises would deter them.

But then again, turkeys are not the smartest birds in the world....or am I misreading them and it's really courage?  I am so very, very thankful that Benjamin Franklin's choice of the turkey for our national bird was voted down in favor of the eagle!  The hen and poults are fun to watch, it's the older ones that irritate me so.

Useless turkey facts;  http://www.think-differently-about-sheep.com/Turkey_Facts.htm

	The Turkey is indigenous to the Americas.
	The Native American name for turkey is 'firkee', from this the turkey may have got his name. Some claim that Christopher Columbus named the turkey "tuka," the Tamil word for peacock. Here we have to remember that at the time Columbus thought he was in India and not in the New World, considering this, this definition seems more plausible. It has also been suggested that a physician who served under Columbus, Luis de Torres, named the bird "tukki," a Hebrew word for big bird.
	Benjamin Franklin called the Turkey "a bird of courage" he thought the turkey truly deserved to be the national symbol of America instead of the Bald Engle, whom he felt was "a coward".
	A baby Turkey is called a Poult, a fryer is the name given to a turkey under sixteen weeks of age,  while a turkey five to seven months old is called a young rooster and a turkey 15 months or older is termed mature.
	A group of Turkeys is called a rafter rather than a flock or a gobble as most people incorrectly refer to them.

 

	Did you know that a turkey has a wingspan of nearly six feet. In the open forests in which they live they are by far the largest bird.
	The usual lifespan of a turkey is 10 years.
	Turkeys have been around for almost 10 million years and diverged from pheasants
	Turkeys were domesticated by the Aztecs long before they were introduced into Europe by the Spaniards.