Smoked turkey!

Every now and then, even an old guy like me sees something and can honestly declare, "Wow! I've never seen that before..."

It happened today.

I took a little stress-relief bike ride, up in Boise's north end. I was riding west on Good Street, approaching 32nd, when I saw that there was traffic jamming, up ahead. There was a dark lumpy-looking thing, right in the middle of the road. Since it was around get-out-of-school time, my first and worst thought was that somebody had just hit a child crossing the street. (What a horrible notion!) But as I got closer, it turned out to be... a mature male turkey, with tail feathers fanned out and struttin' his stuff! Awesome!

As I rode slowly past, I "gobbled" at him in my very best turkey voice. He gobbled back happily, but looked to be in no hurry to go anywhere.

I rode about a block down the road and decided to get involved. I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket (after pulling over, of course), and called the "non-emergency" dispatch line. I told the nice lady who answered of the situation. She said unfortunately there wasn't much she could do, and gave me the Animal Control number. I called - it was busy. By then, the turkey had wandered from the road to the sidewalk, so I elected not to get involved further.

Hopefully Mr. Turkey survived to gobble another day.