garg

Wake up to an incredible, unlikely-sounding racket of birds somewhere out the window. I think it must be birds, though I consider the possibility that is it the infernal squeaking of some giant person polishing some giant object well past the point that its own cleanliness begins to make an eepa-eepa-eepa sound.

Swearing softly, I realize there is no hope of getting back to sleep, and I get up and slump to the bathroom. There the sound is coming in the window from the roof of the building, giving a bizarre stereo effect. I slump back out into the main rooms. The racket is definitely coming through the bedroom window as well. I raise the shade, not expecting to be able to pick out the source of the noise. After all, jays frequently get into long, drawn-out singing contest from within the foliage, invisible to me. Maybe this is a particularly obnoxious and disoriented bunch of gulls.

I look out. The source is immediately apparent. The roof of the adjacent two buildings (and, my ears inform me, my own building's roof) is entirely covered in turkeys, all gazing hillward and all yodelling and squonking their tiny feathered heads off.

They are huge and stupid-looking birds. As I watch, several tuck their boney feet under their bellies and take off, an exercise that makes them resemble garbage bags being hurled through the air. One flaps gracelessly into a nearby pinetree and regards me beadily for several minutes. As I look on, some ten of them take wing, are replaced by another five or so flying up from somewhere in the underbrush, who then in turn galumph across the roof and fly off.

Now the chimney pots of the houses east of here are graced, many of them, with a decorative turkey. They have quieted somewhat as well.

I think I hear a crow.