Readers,
This week, we saw a lone wild turkey standing on top of a wooden fence in a wooded area close to a parking lot. With Thanksgiving and all, we kind of assumed that turkeys would be skittish creatures, like the housefly of game birds. But nope. This one stood on the aged fence with indifference. It noticed we were there (we made eye contact), but it was the kind of awkward, half-second recognition you get from passersby on the sidewalk. It didn’t care.
Maybe the turkey felt daring because it had just performed one of the most impressive athletic feats for a non-flying bird by scaling a fence double its height. Or maybe the turkey thought humans looked weaker at eye level. Or, and this is what we’d like to believe, it felt safe because it squinted and chose to believe that what it saw staring at it from five feet away were also turkeys which, though oddly somewhat human-shaped, were turkeys nevertheless. That’s why, to reassure the bird, we whispered, “Hey, don’t worry, buddy. We don’t really fly either.”
There the turkey stood. For a few minutes, it looked around slowly and took in its surroundings from the new vantage point: a gravel path, dried leaves, swaying tree tops. Then it put one foot over the edge, flapped its wings, and landed on the ground. It inched closer to us. Turkeys can’t kill people, right? It looked like it might; its eyes were locked on our position, and its head bobbed while it moved with the same intensity of a sprinter’s pumping arms. You’re SURE, right?
The turkey wasn’t there for us. It stopped a few inches away from our feet and pecked its beak between pieces of gravel to grab a couple seeds it had somehow noticed from the fence.
But the realization that we are beautifully insignificant in this bird’s universe is only part of the reason why we have decided to make the turkey the center of this week’s issue of The Yale Herald. As writers and editors, we pride ourselves on being noticers—of the world and its nuances, of language and its powers. But truth be told, we only noticed this turkey in the first place because another person was already there photographing the scene with a long-barreled professional camera.
To the photographer, we thank you. You encouraged us to take note of something we would’ve otherwise missed. To our readers, we hope we can do the same for you. The lone wild turkey sitting on a fence in the woods is already there—it’s just waiting to be found.
Most daringly,
Will and Oscar
