A Father's Day Tribute to an Akhilleus of the Theropods
On this Father's Day, let us pay tribute to one of our local fathers: the Tom Turkey in the blackberry patch 100 yards north. He is a successful father: five hens and forty hatched chicks this year. But the chicks are now down to twenty: snakes, hawks, raccoons, coyotes, cats, dogs, cougars, Acura RSs, Cadillac Escalades.
He is doing his best. He has his feathers fully fluffed out and his tail fanned 24/7, as he stands guard, trying to convince all the snakes, hawks, raccoons, coyotes, cats, dogs, cougars, Acura RSs, Cadillac Escalades that come by that he is a ferocious 40-pound beaked-and-taloned killing machine rather than a 10-pound bird with hollow bones. He bluffs manfully... fowlfully... whatever. But he cannot be everywhere. And when the wind comes whipping up the canyon the fact that most of his apparent volume is fluffed-up feathers means that he behaves less like a well-muscled carnivore and more like a parasail: to watch him display and threaten and then get blown helplessly across the road by a gust is very funny, in a sick way.
Nevertheless, he tries to bluff every snake, hawk, raccoon, coyote, cat, dog, cougar, Acura RS, Cadillac Escalade that comes by in order to keep them away from the chicks. Sooner or later, however, his bluff will fail, and he will become the dinee. This will give extra time for the chicks to escape.
He is a veritable Akhilleus of the theropods.
