Gobble! Gobble!

I've been in the middle of October, Part 2 for 3 days (it's a looong post about the Chicago marathon), but I decided I'll just fill in some things that have happened over the last few months as I can get to them.  A number of my small group of readers have asked me to post about some stuff from the last few months, so I'll keep working on it slowly, but surely.  In the meantime, so I'm not always in a perpetual state of playing blog catch up, I'm going to blog current stuff like I used to before I entered the whirlwind of busyness that came along with becoming a first year pre-k teacher with perfectionist tendencies.  :)

Perhaps a more important reason that I'm blogging something current is that my friend Kat requested that I post a video I told her about.  (Hey friend!)

We spent Thanksgiving on the Ferguson Family Farm and I got to see one of the coolest things ever.  A REAL, LIVE turkey!  That may not seem so exciting really...I mean, we've all seen pictures of them our whole lives.  We know what they look like, but there was just something so exciting about seeing him all puffed up, showing his feathers, and gobbling ON Thanksgiving Day.  As out of the ordinary as it was, in a weird way it was like, of course there's a turkey here, it's Thanksgiving...

Adam shot a quick video of the turkey struttin' his stuff on his phone, but before watching, read some fun facts about turkeys that I learned after being so fascinated by all this.  (This blog post is sure to be a real treat for those of y'all that have been missing my total nerdiness).

• Male turkeys are called "Toms" or "Gobblers."
• Male turkeys are the ones that have all the colorful feathers that they puff up (think of those coloring pages you did in elementary school).
• The red fleshy skin that hangs down over the beak is called a "snood."
• The flap of skin under the beak is called a "wattle" and turns bright red when the Tom is excited.
• Toms puff up their feathers with their full peacock-like display when they are trying to attract a mate or to intimidate other males (which is why the Tom at the farm was doing his full display).  He was letting us all know that it was his territory.
• When a Tom puffs up his feathers and starts to gobble he is "strutting."
• Only male turkeys gobble.

I plan to show the video to my kids next week, so even if no one else who reads this thinks it's cool, I know they will!  (...wondering if the four year olds are starting to affect my cool-ness status...)