Let's talk turkey!

Boston Globe

BeverlyBeckham

At first I thought, Wow. Look at this! I’m being greeted by two, clearly excited to see me, plucked from central casting turkeys clucking at my passenger door.

“Hey, guys!” I said, grabbing my purse and a gift bag holding a bottle of nice chardonnay. I got out of my car at Dedham Plaza and walked smiling toward my feathered friends. “What are you doing in a parking lot? You’ll get yourselves killed. You need to be careful.”

Here’s the thing about growing up an only child in the 1950s. I believed in Snow White. I believed she really did talk to the animals and they talked to her and that if I ever got lost in the woods — which couldn’t have happened because I wasn’t allowed anywhere near the woods — I would be OK because I would sing them a song like “Whistle While You Work” or “Someday My Prince Will Come” and they would sing along, and pretty soon all the animals would gather and we would all be singing and swaying.

Just like in the movies.

Anyway, because of Snow White, I had no fear of turkeys. From my office window, I see them sometimes, a gang of them with their fanned-out feathers wobbling on skinny legs, padding their way through traffic, unintimidated by 18-wheelers, getting aggressive drivers who never slow down to let me cross, hit the brake, and gaze. I admire this in a turkey: Its ability to stop people dead in their tracks, to make them gawk in this crazy, busy hurry-up world.

I did not gawk at the turkeys who were greeting me. I was thrilled, all sunshine and smiles because, although I have grown old, I have not grown up. This was a Disney moment. I felt it. I knew it. I was in La La Land, bewitched by this pair, one with its tail fanned to perfection, the other with feathers an iridescent blue. I chatted with the turkeys. I believed I was making friends. And so I walked toward them as they walked toward me as if we were about to shake hands.

Only all at once, they were not walking. They were sprinting, puffed up, their wings spread, lunging, their necks like a slinky, getting longer then shorter, squealing and squeaking, both of them on the move. Toward me.

Suddenly, I was not feeling the love.

Now would be a good time to grab the umbrella I keep in the car, I thought. I read somewhere that an open umbrella scares away turkeys. The car was right there, behind me.

But really? What kind of advice is this? What good does an umbrella stuffed in a bag on the floor in the back seat of a locked car do anyone? The turkeys were inching closer. I would have to turn my back on them. “Why are you doing this?” I asked them. They squealed louder.

Have I mentioned that there was a young woman in the parking lot filming all this? Suddenly being terrorized by two angry turkeys didn’t frighten me half as much as the idea of being seen on TikTok talking to these turkeys. “Three turkeys,” the headline would read. How long had she been filming I wondered as the turkeys nudged closer and I stared death in the eye.

Or, to be accurate, four eyes.

“Go away, turkeys!” I yelled, with no trace of Snow White in my voice. I was the huntsman now. When the turkeys lunged, I didn’t sing “Whistle While you Work.” I took my gift bag of nice chardonnay and swung it at them. I swung it again. And again. And again.

They backed off every time.

And what was I thinking during all of this? Two things: I hope the gift bag holds out because I do not want to lose this bottle of chardonnay. And please God, don’t let this end up on TikTok.

The hero of this tale is the woman with the cellphone. She saved the day because not only was she filming these turkeys, she was shooing and yelling at them, too. She directed me to a door, which I couldn’t see because I was walking backward. She opened the door and held it as I backed in. And then she slammed the door shut.

The turkeys went crazy. They gobbled and glared at us through a full-length glass window. They stomped. They shrieked. They were not ready to quit.

“This happened to a mailman in Cambridge,” the woman said. “Two turkeys attacked him.”

I googled “turkey attack, Cambridge, MA” and sure enough, two turkeys attacked a US Postal Service mail carrier in April. They knocked him over and he had to have his hip replaced. “I’m going to be paranoid every time I see them now,” the mailman, Ed Mitchell, told the Globe.

Eventually the turkeys gave up the chase. They stopped squawking. They stopped glaring. With a glass window between us and the chardonnay safe, I felt safe, too. “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, I’m glad to see you go,” I sang in my head as the turkeys waddled away.

Beverly Beckham can be reached at bev@beverlybeckham.com.