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You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Meeting the Neighbors

Meeting the Neighbors

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I had to drop Lily off at the vet this morning, as she is having her teefus cleaned and having a benign tumor removed from her bum, so keep her in your thoughts. Afterward, I went berry picking at some of my spots, and on the way ran into a nice young family:

You can’t really tell from the stationary picture, but you can see almost a dozen little jakes and jennys there:

I like how after I complimented them, they talked back (you gotta listen closely). Good haul at the spots- picked another gallon back in under an hour. I’m up to about 4 gallons frozen, so I’m going to have to start setting it up soon as preserves.

Reader Interactions

35Comments

  1. 1.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    Good morning, this makes me wish I had my phone when we went to the dump the other day, there was a mom turkey and about 8 babies and she walked out in the middle of the road, stopped and just waited while all the babies crossed safely, then she walked off after them.

    I miss berry picking, all the blackberry brambles that used to grow wild around my town got bulldozed over and turned into sub-divisions. Mom and I used to pick blackberries and high-bush blueberries every summer (coastal Connecticut).

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    Nice turkeys!

    I encountered a feral pig while walking up our road yesterday. I rounded a curve and saw a medium-sized oinker rooting around in the weeds about 20 yards away. We were each taken aback by the other’s sudden presence and just stared for a few seconds. Then the pig took off, crashing through the brush.

  7. 7.

    JPL

    Does Lily mind going to the vets? Finch has a note on his chart to baby him, because he had a panic attack before. Thinking good thoughts for Lily and I hope she doesn’t have to wear that darn cone.

  10. 10.

    J R in WV

    We saw some young turkeys at the mouth of the driveway last time we went out together… last week sometime. They were in weeds, and all you could see was heads peaking up like fuzzy periscopes, taking a look around, and ducking back into the weeds.

    They can tear up a planted bed pretty quick, so glad they are not inclined to hang out around the house. All the gardeners for food have fences — BIG fences — to protect the veges. Woven wire plus electric wire, mostly. Some folks use chicken wire and nail it to the ground to keep wood chucks and raccoons out.

  12. 12.

    mrmoshpotato

    @JPL: Haha, wasn’t even thinking of that Wild Turkey.

    Wild turkey: GOBBLE! GOBBLE!
    Everyone: Relax and have a drink.

  13. 13.

    kindness

    Our family used to pick blackberries and then make blackberry pudding. It’s more of a desert bread type affair that you put a glaze over it and eat (confection sugar & butter, 1 drop of cream). It was decadent & we loved it.

  15. 15.

    dp

    Very cool. Pro tip re: blackberries: It’s worth it to get a jelly bag and get rid of all the seeds. Also, cobbler rocks.

  16. 16.

    donnah

    One of my rug hooking students last week wanted me to draw a wild turkey for her pattern, so I did. Turkeys are not very pretty, at least their heads and necks. But she had fun hooking it, and we named him “Tom Fowler”.

  17. 17.

    rikyrah

    The Obama administration rejected a plan from Chilean billionaire Andrónico Luksic to dig copper mines in Minnesota. Then Luksic bought a $5.5 million house in DC and rented it to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump for $15,000/month. Guess what happened next? https://t.co/mLE5iy6USn

    — Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) June 25, 2019

  18. 18.

    TaMara (HFG)

    Adorable little turkeys. I have found that talking with birds, they always respond – also keeps the geese from attacking me – I assume it’s because predators don’t normally speak to them, so they think I’m safe. Or they are so damn confused they just move away from the crazy person.

    Keeping Lily in my thoughts.

  19. 19.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    J R in WV – Surprisingly, around my subdivision and occasionally in my yard (or unfortunately in the road) we have: possums, skunks, coyote, deer, fox, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, wild turkey and the rare juvenile heron. I gave up on the garden because the fence and the dog still did not stop the garden raids.

    There is a State park and beach not far in one direction and a bird sanctuary and marsh and river in the other.

  20. 20.

    Immanentize

    @Major Major Major Major: If I could, I would include a picture of my friend’s Jeep with a female turkey sitting on top. The Jeep is black, so maybe the bird liked the warmth of the car in the sun. That bird came back every day for a week to car sit. Then, moved on.

  22. 22.

    TomatoQueen

    Just out of interest, I’m on the work laptop (IE, Win10 Upgrade how exciting, usual VPN, web email and gateways locked away), and upon clicking the sideways link to this thread, I landed on the ferris wheel of thread v access thread v access, spinning so fast I got dizzy. In order to get it to fucking stop, I had to pull up Task Mgr, then size it down to get to the Task Mgr view, which then obligingly shut IE off. Retried the same sequence and without any ado landed on the correct thread. It reminded me of what used to happen to one’s screen when a Browser Hijacker was loose (fun times not so long ago). All of which is by the by as Lily’s Ladylike Bum is today’s target, and optima fortuna to it and to her. Wild Turkeys ate my mother’s rhododendron buds once. I don’t remember who screeched more.

  25. 25.

    low-tech cyclist

    John – what kind of berries were you picking?

    Down here in southern Maryland, wild raspberries (aka wineberries) are just coming into season. Given the differences in altitude and latitude, I’m guessing your season is 2-3 weeks later than ours.

  32. 32.

    Luciamia

    John, try making Summer Pudding.

    Do you keep that area a secret, like a truffle patch? ?

  34. 34.

    Michael Allen

    @dp: Cobbler is way easier than pie and a lot healthier as well. There are many recipes available for the biscuitlike part, but if you are the laziest person on earth you could go with the can of biscuits you hit on the counter edge and do OK. Recommendation: French vanilla ice cream.

  35. 35.

    Michael Allen

    @Mel: @Mel: @Mel: A buckle is a cobbler with the batter part underneath and hopefully coming up around the edges when baked like a pie crust, in case anyone is wondering.

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