We live in a wild neighborhood.  Al and I hit the sack about 11 p.m. and by midnight he was fast asleep, but I usually toss and turn for awhile.  Midnight arrived and I could hear the usual festivities – car horns honking, people yelling “happy new year!”  We live on a hillside and our next door neighbors are in a little valley. The house on the hill on their other side is home to a young family.  I do not actually know them but their little crying baby has suddenly started to talk like a toddler and has been replaced by yet another crying baby. Their deck faces our house and although I rarely see them, I can hear them quite clearly.   It has been delightful to listen to the older one learn to speak, first in garbled words and now in complete sentences, with the accompanying ability to argue her case!

Last night I think they had company and let the kids stay up because I could hear tiny voices saying happy new year and the toot-tooting went on for longer than most adults would want to toot on a cold winter night (yes, it was in the 30’s here).   Dogs were barking, a big woofing bark and a little yipping bark.  I don’t know where Ed was except that I had covered him up with a blanket before I went to bed, much to Al’s eye-rolling.

Everything settled down, except for one group of very rowdy revelers.  The midnight celebrations had apparently awakened our old friends, the turkeys.  I started to giggle and really couldn’t stop, and wished Al was awake to enjoy the silliness of it.  I did elbow him but only got a “grmph” in response.  They went on for quite some time, gobble gobble gobble, gobble gobble gobble.  If turkeys could think – and trust me, they can’t, they don’t have enough sense to get out of the way of a two ton gas powered vehicle coming down the road – they must have wondered what all the fuss was about and why it stopped just when they were starting to have fun.

The turkeys drive me nuts.  They erode the hillside, they fight viciously with each other, tear up the garden and leave droppings the size of a softball, but not as compact.  There is something about them, though, that just tickles me.  So goofy.

So once again, Happy New Year, gobble gobble gobble.