Turkey Attack!

It's true that this is the most random collection of pictures a blog has seen yet but I had them kicking around on my camera and thought I'd finally put them on. The first picture of a turkey is in reference to an encounter I had a couple of weeks ago that reoccurred yesterday and reminded me of it. So one of my main jobs at Bear World is to be in charge of opening and closing the gate to the bear exhibit for cars. I'm on the herbivore side of the fence for obvious safety reasons (or so I thought). There is a flock of turkeys that hang around the park and I always thought they looked pretty neat. Well a couple of weeks ago a flock of wild female turkeys flew into the park and left after a couple of days (much to the dismay of the male turkeys). Unfortunately I was in the victim of that disappointment and anger . So while I was going to open the gate for an incoming car out of no where come this charging male turkey. I figure birds are dumb and harmless so I try to shoo it away, finding out that aggression is met with aggression when dealing with turkeys. He turns on me and starts pecking me and throwing his surprisingly heavy body against me. All the while the people in the car are watching this fiasco, unable to help me in any way. Now I'm an animal lover but you better believe that I was kicking that stupid turkey as hard as I could to get him away but nothing was working. Finally I just slowly started backing away, making no sudden aggressive moves and when the turkey was finally convinced that his authority would go unchallenged again he moved off and left me alone. When I went up to the car to get the gate for them they assured me that they would keep the rules and never get out of their car. Small wonder!



Anyway, the picture of my niece, Noelle, is from when I was helping Regan and Pete move and me and Noelle played hide and go seek in the kitchen. Such a cute girl!
The other picture is just so Idaho I couldn't help posting it. When Cody and I first moved into this new house we had to do a lot of work on the field we keep the horses on. It was choked with dead grass that had to be gathered and burned. Starting a fire on your own property in California would be big trouble but in Idaho it's an everyday thing. So this is a picture of my huge field pile burning. Oh Idaho! Don't you just love it? I'll try to put a couple of more pictures of my pregnant horses on here. They are getting so FAT!