Eastern Male Wild Turkey Courtesy StatesSymbolsUSA.org

Tom Turkey 

Randy, 10, and Kathy, 8, Stone enjoyed going to their grandpa, Tom's, farm in rural Pennsylvania in the mountains 40 miles from their home in Pittsburgh every summer. "To help with chores," their Mom, Julie, always told them. They knew better, she wanted them out of the city at their age because there was so much gang activity and even though they were good kids, she worried about them falling into friendship with the wrong kids doing drugs, gangs and things like that.

The grandkids did help with chores. They mowed grandpa's lawn and weeded his garden. Helped with the milking of the five cows morning and evening and helped pick berries in the forest so that he could make preserves from them and from his apple and pear trees. There was a lot of busy work on the farm but they enjoyed doing it with his instruction.

And Mom was right, Grandpa had to do all the cooking and cleaning since Grandma Cora died from what Tom described as a "busted gut," after trying to help him lift a wagon whose wheel had fallen off before Randy was born. He didn't much want to talk about it, but there were things around the house like pictures so the kids got to see what she looked like--like Mom, only older. And there were touches around the house that definitely weren't  Tom's doing. Feminine touches like doilies and curtains. Those precious pictures on the walls and the piano that she played.

But there was always time to explore. There were bullheads, bluegills and a few largemouth bass in the pond that they loved fishing for and searching the woods and fields for butterflies, worms and patches of berries just ripening to eat. Grandpa Tom always cautioned them. "If you see a bear, just leave him to his territory. Back up slowly and leave the berries to him. Understand?"

"I understand!" Both kids would blurt out. It didn't matter that no bears had been seen that close to Pittsburgh for over 50 years. There were other critters. Deer would come out in the evening to the edges of the forest to graze in the fields. Rabbits, likewise, on the lawn seeking sweet clover and in the garden where they were appreciated by Tom. There were squirrels and chipmunks, possums and stinky skunks, all kinds of songbirds, butterflies in the meadows, and frogs down by the pond. Sometimes, flocks of turkeys… Especially in the fall. Snakes they had to watch out for like copperheads, poisonous.

In the forest, the kids could find mushrooms and nuts. When they found them, they took them to grandpa to see if they were edible or not. Tom always knew and gave them the reason why so if they wanted to pick the good ones, he was more than happy for them to do it. He didn't have time to go out in the forest gathering like that without his wife around to help.

One day, a couple of days after they got there in early June, Randy was looking for some mushrooms under a blooming rhododendron, when he spied a hidden nest of twigs with a large egg in it. He yelled excitedly, "Come here, Kath! Look what I found!"

Kathy rushed over to see what he was bent over looking at. "Wow! That is a big egg. I wonder what it is? A duck egg?"

"Grandpa will know. Let's take it to him."

Randy carefully picked up the egg, wrapped it in a couple of leaves and walked holding it in front of him worried that he might trip and break the thing, slowing him down while Kathy ran on ahead calling out, "Grandpa! We found an egg! An egg!"

Grandpa Tom had been doing some work in the barn and was at the door when they arrived with their treasure. "Let's see what you've got there…" Randy carefully handed the egg to him and Tom hefted it a bit.

Kathy was exuberant. Jumping up and down. She exclaimed, "Looks big enough to give us all breakfast tomorrow morning! Can we fry it or make scrambled eggs?" 

"Hold your horses, girl! We may not be able to eat this one. Why don't we candle it and find out?"

They followed Grandpa Tom to the milk shed built on the side of the barn where they kept the milk cold until it was picked up by running ice cold spring water off the mountain above the farm into tanks where they kept the milk in large milk cans.

There was a box of stick matches on a shelf there. Tom went to it and removed a match. He shook it at them with a stern, squinty look and admonished, "I shouldn't have showed you where these matches are. Don't you ever play with them. This barn and all I have will go up in smoke and flames if you just accidentally drop this match on this floor with all of the dry straw and hay."

And then, he mellowed a bit and his eyes brightened as he said, "Now we will find out." He struck the match on the side of the box and it burst into brilliant flame with that sulfur smell that always accompanied its blue, red and yellow flash. He held the burning match low and then, the egg over it so that the flame showed through the shell, revealing what was inside so that Randy and Kathy could see. "What do you see?" He asked.

"I see something fuzzy in there. Is that legs?" Randy saw it right away.

"Me too! "Kathy agreed.

"I guess we won't be eatin’ this one. But there still is a way we can find out what kind of egg it is."

Randy looked up at his grandpa, curious, "How?"

"We can hatch it. Randy, you carry the egg with us."  Tom handed the egg back to Randy.

They left the barn and went over to the chicken coop. Inside a little storage area there was a small glass and metal box with a little light bulb in it and a cord dangling when Tom took it off the shelf.

"This lightbulb keeps the temperature just right for hatching eggs. We'll put this egg in here and leave it, here in the chicken coop. Every morning when you collect eggs and a few times in between, check and see if it is hatched or hatching. If you see that it has, call me." Tom looked them in the eyes to see if they understood. They shook their heads vigorously looking up at him, telling him that they did.

Five days later when looking for eggs laid the night before, the kids eagerly checked the incubator. They saw a beak breaking through the shell. Excited, they ran off to tell Grandpa Tom who was milking cows in the barn. "Grandpa! It's hatching! Come! It's hatching." He came right over to see what he could do to get the little chick out of its confinement.

Taking his pocketknife, Tom poked away at the shell to help the little guy get out safely. The chick seemed quite eager, wiggling a lot and kicking with his feet as he banged away at the shell with his big tooth for that purpose. He was big and ugly looking when he fell out of the shell. Too big for the place Tom kept young chicks, immediately searching around for food in the coop.

"What do you think it is?" Tom asked the kids, again.

Randy blurted, "Looks like a dinosaur! They say that all birds are dinosaurs and this one sure looks like one!"

"It's a tom turkey. A wild turkey. Looks like a pretty healthy one from the size of it. In a year make a good Thanksgiving dinner."

Kathy was shocked. "We can't eat him. We found him. He's ours!"

"I'm the one that's going to have to feed him and keep him around long enough for him to get to where he'll be edible for Thanksgiving. We're farmers. We grow food to eat. We can't afford to have pets like you do in the city."

"Okay Grandpa, I see what you mean. He will need a lot of taking care of. But he sure is taking care of himself right now, gobbling up all that chicken feed." She laughed.

Tom left to go back to the barn. But the little turkey saw him leaving and followed, probably thinking that Tom was his mother. Something that birds do, called imprinting. Once inside the barn, the little featherless turkey with a lot of fuzz was underfoot Tom as he tried to work.

The kids observed and finally, Kathy announced, "I think we should call him Tom, you know, Tom Junior because it looks like he has adopted you as his father. Tom thought the idea was foolish but he didn't want to disappoint his little granddaughter, so he let it pass. You don't name animals you're going to eat, he thought, but didn't want to tell them.

So it was that Tom Turkey, while he didn't mind the petting and hugging of these little humans always eager to grab him, followed around his father eating whatever was around like flies and grain in the barn and in the garden, angle worms and grubs that were turned up whenever there was tilling, weeding or harvesting vegetables.

Throughout the rest of the summer Tom Junior grew quickly into a very large bird and began to show his adolescent feathers. In the fall, when the corn was ready for harvest, he couldn't get enough, eating every kernel that his father, Tom, would let him have.

But, as always, the kids had to go back home to go to school. Grandpa Tom had to take care of Tom Junior all by himself. At Thanksgiving, when the kids came back with their parents, Tom Junior even came in the house, but they didn't tell him that they were eating his cousin. Didn't want to alarm the growing boy.

Grandpa came to Pittsburgh for Christmas and a neighbor took care of the animals while he was gone for a week. When he arrived back home, Tom Junior flew up onto his shoulder he was so happy to see his father back home.

When school was over in the spring, Randy and Kathy came again. One of the first things they did was find Tom Junior and how he had grown with his feathers darker and with more definition. His wattle had grown and he was beginning to look more like the tom turkey that he was, a wild turkey at that.

But Tom's constant harassment underfoot of his namesake Pappy, Grandpa Tom was getting on the old man's nerves and he was thinking of locking the rambunctious bird up in a cage until it was time for him to butcher for Thanksgiving. I'll have to invite half the county to help me get rid of all that meat, he thought, but didn't dare tell the grandkids.

On the day of their arrival, Julie came to the rescue. She saw how Tom came right up to his friends and remember them allowing Randy and Kathy to smooth his feathers right away and even hugging them. But throughout her time there before heading back, she noticed that Tom Junior was making a big nuisance of himself by constantly following Grampa around and getting in the way of his work.

"I've been thinking, Tom," she told them at supper that Julie had prepared. "That bird of yours is too precious to Randy and Kathy for you to think of making him Thanksgiving dinner. And I can see that he is a real nuisance now that it's summer and you have so much work to do around this place. There is a petting zoo next to the Pittsburgh Zoo where I think he would be welcome and a great asset, he is so friendly…"

"Oh Mom, you can't do that. He's ours. We found him!" Kathy couldn't help interrupting.

"I know, but can't you see that he's pestering your grandpa to no end all? Had to put up with your bird all last winter when you weren't here. It isn't fair making him do what you should do… Take care of your bird since you found him!"

"But Mom…" Randy started to whine.

"That's it. When I leave at the end of the week I'm taking Tom Junior with me. Is that okay with you, Grandpa?"

Tom Stone just shook his head, Yes, in agreement with her, not wanting to get in the fight with his grandchildren that he adored and would do anything for.

Sunday came too soon and with Tom Turkey properly placed in the trunk of the car with proper ventilation, Julie drove off leaving her two kids for the summer like she always did. She arrived at the petting zoo just as they were closing for the evening. When she opened the trunk and Tom appeared un-rattled from his ride, the manager was quite pleased with how tame and agreeable Tom was. Took him in right away. Julie was glad she didn't have to do the other alternatives, turning him over to the meat market or to the county hospital.

For the first week, Tom Turkey was the star of the petting zoo. He seemed to love all of the kids and fit right in with all the tame animals. But he didn't show them that he could fly. So on the fourth night of his new residency, even though he was in an enclosure with a high fence, Tom easily took wing and left.

The next morning, when Randy and Kathy accompanied their grandfather to the barn for the morning milking, they were surprised to see Tom waiting conflict by the end of the summer for them. It appeared that he had a good sense, like many birds, of where the best places were, and easily ran and flew back to the farm. Earned the right to stay the summer, Grandpa Tom was so impressed.

But when Julie got the telephone call that told her where he was, she thought of another possibility. On the last week of summer, they occasionally visited her sister in the Ozarks of Missouri. Julie thought that might work. But she didn't tell the kids. Got a special cage with windscreen to mount on top of the car for their weeklong trip at the end of summer.

By that time, while Tom occasionally took forays into the nearby woods, for the most part, the kids saw that he was becoming a real nuisance and hampering the work they had to do, too. When the summer ended and they were picked up to go see their cousins in Missouri, they were happy that they were taking Tom to a new home.

While the cousins lived in beautiful wooded mountains right next to a national forest and state park, their dad worked in town and they didn't farm. The cousins had some cages with a raccoon, two possums, an owl, two flying squirrels and some turtles and snakes. So they made a home for Tom and accepted him right away. Tom preferred wandering the surroundings checking out the native food. They liked the idea that they didn't have to feed him and that he liked poisonous snakes like rattlesnakes.

Over the Labor Day weekend they returned home without Tom. During the fall season, Tom joined the local male turkeys flocking up and mating. His size, about twice that of the average male turkey, made him the leader in the pecking order of males. The cousins, fearful that he might be a target, tied a high visibility orange, purple and lime striped patch to his breast feathers as a warning to hunters that he was working with humans.

But he was always willing to come back to the house and get a hug from the cousins, as well as approach hikers on the trails so that they could also watch him display his magnificent tail feathers and his beard that was just beginning to grow after a year and a half of his long life.

That fall, he became a legend among hikers in those woods. Everyone was taking photographs of him and wardens told turkey hunters that he was off limits. A special display was set up in the Visitor's Center with many photographs taken of him with visitors to the park. Unlike other wild turkeys, Tom's agreeable nature made him a celebrity.

Soon, the Department of Natural Resources took note and studies were begun. Tom was tagged and even carried a camera for a while during one study. He was weighed in at 51 pounds, more than twice the weight of the average tom turkey and seemed to be the favorite of hen turkeys who weighed, on average, 9 pounds.

Tom ended up being one of the most studied wild turkeys in the United States. He lived 24 years, nearly four times longer than the average wild tom turkey. Over the years, Randy and Kathy, even after they went on to their separate lives and their own families, returned to visit their cousins who remained in the area and occasionally, on one of the trails, would find him finding them with great emotion as though he remembered and would even know when they had returned to come find them.

Copyright 2020 © Ronald W. Hull

11/24/20