Gobbling It Up

 My family has a long history of transient pets.  Everything from bats to snakes(click).  It was a veritable menagerie. (Click).  Coco blames it on me, but I blame it on her.  She is the instigator.  I am the enabler.  Josh is the animal lover.  Felshaw is the supportive bystander, and as much an animal lover as the rest of us.  So I guess it's everyone's fault, except Trajan.  He hates animals, but he managed to somehow survive the King menagerie, probably by tuning out everything around him and focusing on drawing buildings with millions of tiny, perfect bricks in the walls.  He may have issues, but that's another post.

 Let's talk about Turkey Day!  Sunday night, Coco said to Emily, "It would be stupid to get chicks, right?  They poop and the novelty wears off and then I have these chicks."  The next morning, Emily got a text from Coco:  "Want to meet Circe and me at the farm store?!"  Coco is weak.  But she recognizes her weaknesses and doesn't waste time fighting them.  Instead of asking, "Should we get some baby chicks," she skips that whole useless part of the discussion and goes striaght to, "Which ones are the cutest?"

 Tizzy, Rolayne and Ptolemy are abviously the cutest things in the farm store, but aside from them, the baby turkeys won the cute contest.  They were sleepy and soft, fluffy and small.  And they purr!

Ptolemy is obsessed.  Every 30 minutes, if he's not already knocking down Coco's door, he is asking if he can go see Turks and Caicos, his new best friends.  Aren't Coco's names for the turkeys clever!?  The plan for them, if they aren't mauled to death first, is to keep them inside until they are big enough to roam the yard with the cats.  According to farm lore, cats and turkeys can coexist without too many bloodbaths.  

And speaking of bloodbaths, there isn't anyone in the family who has the guts (ha ha) to slaughter a turkey, let alone eat it on Thanksgiving.  Only one or two generations removed from the family farm and we're all too squeamish to entertain the thought.  Food is what stores are for.  Except the farm store.  That's where you buy pets.  Maybe Turks and Caicos will end up on someone else's table, but not ours.  It just depends on how entertaining they are, and whether the stories about cats and turkeys are true.

 We couldn't get enough of animals yesterday.  I had to run Golda to Salt Lake for a Federation rehearsal with her pianist, who lives behind the zoo.  (During seminary was the only time during the week we could figure out to do it.  Don't tell the prophet.)  These babies and I whisked briskly around the exhibits, or as briskly as you can when you're stopping to stomp on manhole covers and follow butterflies.  I think they may have even notices some of the zoo animals when they happened to look up from the exciting world of The Ground.  The zoo had nothing on Coco's house, and as soon as we were home, Ptolemy started his questioning:  "Can I go to Coco's to see the baby turkeys?"

 As if we needed additional animals.  Would you look at this wild thing?  The little turkey!