I’ve Lived in Maine Forever and Just Saw a Turkey Fly for the First Time

There are a lot of things you learn on TV, especially when you grew up in the late '70s and early '80s and the entire family was watching sitcoms from that era. Sanford and Son, All in the Family, Happy Days, and Welcome Back Kotter are just a few of those shows that I watched. What does this have to do with turkeys? Wait for it.

Earlier this week, I was headed to bed. I go early since I'm at work by five, so it wasn't quite dark yet, but dark enough for me to see a giant blur out the bedroom window going through the air and ending up in a tree. I watched for a while as it worked its way over the branches, trying to clumsily climb higher.

Once it finally settled, I saw the silhouette in the slowly-darkening sky of a turkey, and it was making noise. Not a gobble, but more like a clucking sound.

After we got close and fumbled with the camera a bit, it took off and sailed down into the neighbor's yard.

I had been under the assumption that turkeys couldn't fly based on a 1978 episode of WKRP in Cincinnati called "Turkey's Away." The fictional radio station, which in part made me want to get into radio myself, was doing a promotion giving away free turkeys for Thanksgiving by tossing them out of a helicopter.

So apparently, despite WKRP's hilarious episode, turkeys can fly, but they don't fly very far (about 100 yards at most to evade predators). They also fly up into trees for the night, which seems to be what the turkey in my backyard was trying to do when we interrupted his beauty sleep.