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The neighborhood turkeys have again made a complete nuisance of themselves. We never noticed before we had our driveway paved, but now we know: these birds crap everywhere.

Today I cleaned up some of the mess. I scraped up about a dozen dried-out deposits, which had chemically welded themselves to the asphalt. From my perspective at the other end of the rake, it felt like a covalent bond, meaning the asphalt molecules were sharing electrons with the dessicated turkey feces. The shit was stuck, in any case.

The flock seems to be bigger this year. I guess there aren’t enough local predators. I tried being a predator last year — I bought a wrist rocket on Ebay, with the intention of dissuading the turkeys from eating all our persimmons. But the slingshot was a cheap offshore replica, more capable of inflicting pain on me than the turkeys. On my first shot, the band snapped off and just about took an eye out. I decided that shooting from the hip would be safer, although it didn’t help my aim.

Also preventing my success was the fact that for ammunition I was using the only projectile I could find in the kitchen: dry-roasted almonds. They’re not as aerodynamic as you might expect.

I am having recurring fantasies that one of my neighbors will decide to have fresh turkey this Thanksgiving. If so they’ll have to move quickly — last year, the flock was making daily drive-bys until the day before Thanksgiving, when they disappeared for about four days. I’m not kidding. Those birds knew.

But for the next day or two, at least, a hunter would need to simply sit on our front porch. He needn’t wait long; our driveway is the turkeybahn. The birds go one way or the other a couple times a day. I’ve even seen them run laps.