I named him after a gangster of the '20's. From the monent he grew his first tail feathers Floyd was in constant display. And when you called him a "pretty boy" he would really strut his stuff.
Born June 18, 2011, he was one of the seven turkey chicks I helped from their shells in the incubator. These were Spanish Black Turkeys that I was hatching for a friend of a friend, and he graciously left me three of them for my troubles.
They became Floyd, Mrs. T and Maude.
Here are Floyd and Mrs. T.
Floyd usually chose to either be alone or with humans when possible.
In fact Floyd was a real people person. I truely believe that he thought he was human. Whenever we had visitors, Floyd was always right there doing his Floyd thing. This consisted of him walking around a person in full display and very slowly inching his way closer and closer until he finally touched them with his feathers. Unless they tried to touch him, in which case he moved away and started all over again. Floyd did NOT like to be touched. Occaisionally I was able to pet him when he was on his roost for the night, but usually he just moved out of reach.
This year Floyd and the girls supplied us with many eggs to incubate. Then Maude snuck off one day and started a nest outside. She hatched 12 chicks and did her best to raise them outside by herself. (This put Mrs. T into brood mode, she immediately built a nest and tried to hatch her own too. However the chickens added to her nest at every opportunity and when the first egg hatched she abandoned the nest. A couple of weeks later she realised she had hatched a chicken and abandoned that too. However she has continued to lay an egg a day for the last 4 months.) Then week by week they dwindled until she only had 9 left. Then disaster struck. One morning I woke up to find the baby turkeys in the duck pen with the ducks. No sign of Maude so I went searching for the very protective mom. I found piles of feathers where the apparent coyote attack happened and a trail of feathers where it dragged her off. We gathered up the chicks and put them in a cage. Two were sold along with some of the incubated turkeys to make up our final order. We must have sold about 60 turkey chicks this year. The remaining 7 are still here and doing well.
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| "Pretty Boy" Floyd and one of the young 'uns. |
We have been trying to figure out what we were going to do with all of the extra turkeys this winter and Wifey suggested getting rid of Floyd and Mrs. T when we get our last meat turkey butchered. However such a ruckus was formed by family and friends when this was mentioned that we had to keep them. So a neighbor will be buying our extras.
Then today another disaster. About 3:15 this afternoon I was over at my Step-mother's when I recieved a call from Wifey. Someone had murdered Floyd.
A guy had stopped his SUV on the road by the house, got out of his vehicle and shot Floyd twice in our yard. By the time Wifey got to the front porch he was dispatching poor Pretty Boy my stomping his head into the ground. Wifey hollered at him "What the Hell are you doing shooting my animals." But he just ignored her and picked up Floyd and threw him in the back of his vehicle and sped off down the road.
As soon as I got home we went in search of the vehicle at the local DNR parking lots but to no avail. We came home and called the DNR and reported the incident.
Talk about pissed off !!!
It's degenerates like this that give hunters a bad name. Not only to be driving with a loaded gun in the car, but to stop 50 feet from a house, on the road and shoot a tom turkey surrounded by our other turkeys, chickens, ducks and geese in their yard.
The best 30 foot shots of his life. And he needed 2 and still didn't get the job done right.
Somewhere tonight this a_ _ hole is bragging to his friends about his hunting abilities.
Well I hope he chokes on his turkey dinner.
