I blame the turkeys.

I'm the little girl, far right, in the photo.
No fence separating us in this photo!
(Sorry for the grainy picture.)

When I was a young child, my paternal grandparents (see header photo, bottom far right) were raising turkeys, probably for.you.know.what. I was familiar with chickens because my maternal grandmother (see header, bottom left photo) would take me with her to gather eggs, showed me how make them leave their nests and even tied up a hen or two so that I could have a pet chicken, while I visited. (No hating on me, okay? I was a child.)

Turkeys were a different matter.

One day we were visiting my grandparents and ended up outside the turkey pen, looking in through the wire.

“Stand back from the fence,” Grandpa said, “They could bite.”

The turkeys seemed as curious about us as we were about them. While the adults talked, I watched them. They strutted about, sometimes in circles, puffing out their chests, fluffing out their feathers and all the while screaming turkey words at us, in gobbler sounds.

Bold, but not so beautiful, the turkeys moved closer to the wire fence.

I moved closer to the fence.

Something told me to stick my finger through the wire and wiggle it. Know what happened next? Yes, one rude turkey rushed to bite it.

At first I was in shock, then I burst out crying while holding my finger. My grandpa raced to me, lifted me to his arms, and studied my (non)injury.

“A turkey bit me,” I blubbered.

“The turkey thought your finger was a worm and wanted to eat it," he said, rubbing the pain from my finger. "Now don’t do that again.”

I remember I stopped crying to look at my finger. A worm? Eat it?

I also remember the turkeys and I never became friends.