Love Is In The Air. Or, Hope Springs Eternal...

I looked out the patio door yesterday to see him strutting his stuff and puffing his junk for the benefit and admiration of a couple extremely disinterested hens who were much more focused on scarfing down sunflower seeds on the back porch than this tom's sartorial splendor.

Soon, as the weather and hormones heat up, epic backyard battles will rage when additional toms show up to court the neighborhood's flock of beguiling feathered vixens. Or as I like to call them, the bitches. No, it's not a term of misogyny, but if you've ever watched a flock of hen turkeys for any amount of time, you know what I mean. It's a cutthroat group dynamic to say the least, not unlike what I imagine human teenage girls to be.

Having had two sons, and being a former male myself (I'm married now, hence the former...) I of course identify much more readily with the toms. Especially the one that last spring would show up every day like clockwork and assume his position on the back porch directly in front of the patio door.

After a few seconds of preening, this tom would dramatically fan out his tail, puff out his feathers and then slowly, regally and magnificently strut back and forth in front of the patio door, as if to show the world - or at least his own reflection - that here he was, in all his glory.

And not a hen in sight anywhere.

I have no idea - no idea at all - why that would remind me of my own adolescence...