The turkey burger incident

It happened like this…

I was out on a morning trail run with Ollie the Collie.  The day after Memorial Day in New England.

The new spring day was amazing.  A perfect, joyful jewel of a day.  The sky so blue and cloudless that it seemed purposefully painted for me by a beneficent god in a great mood.  That infinitesimal season where it’s still cool but not cold and the biting bugs haven’t emerged.  When nature is exploding with a newfound confidence fueled by April showers.

A crisp new day in a crisp new season of hope.

Our route takes us up and over a ridge and down into a wooded valley where a creek drains from a pond.  Deep in the woods there is a wooden bridge built by the local Scouts that we use to cross the stream.  The water was running high and clear, spilling forth from the spring rains.

It is a beautiful spot under a thick forest canopy where sometimes the dog will pause to take a drink and muddy his feet like a happy supplicant at a forest font.

We run together as a team.  He sets a picket out front and sweeps the trail.  I follow behind and contemplate his furry black rump.

Sometimes he’ll alert, letting me know there’s people on the trail ahead, well before I see or hear them.  We’ve become attuned to each other’s body language and unconscious signaling – like two parts of one moving form.

I suspect that is how it has always been, man and dog moving as one through the primeval lands of the soul.

As we cross the bridge and slow to pick our way through a muddy, boulder field I see his body language change.  He senses something and starts to track sideways, back towards the stream.  He’s not a hunting dog, but he’s on the scent of something.

Which usually, is not a good thing.

Sure enough Ollie finds something in the leaves and mud near the stream and picks it up in his mouth.  We are no longer of one mind.  Unified purpose has been broken.

We are now in competition for whatever prize this is.

Scenarios run through my head.  We are deep in the woods far from any houses. Is it poop?  A dead fish?  A dead something else?

We disagree on what is to be done about the mystery object.  I think he should drop it.  Ollie making wet chomping noises is of a differing opinion.  He thinks ‘he found and it is his now’.

I know better than to try to take something out of his mouth with my hand.  I am outclassed physically.  Subterfuge and social hierarchy are my tools.  I announce with authority that it is time to go back on the leash.  He sees this for what it is and growls menacingly around his mouthful.

He can’t bite me until he drops it.  I fake like I’m going to clip the leash on.  And when he drops it to express his displeasure with those canines on my hand I back off and the conflict is resolved without bloodshed.

He realizes he has crossed a line and skulks off.

He’s still a bit feral, but he’s my brother.

Now, what is this thing that he did not want to give up?

I pick it up.  Wipe the leaves off.

It looks like a turkey burger patty.  About the size of a medium-sized pancake.

One of those pre-made ones that you get in the supermarket that have been stamped out on some relentless industrial burger production line.  Turkeys in one door – patties out the other and on to the truck.  It seems cooked and greasy and undamaged from the recent conflict.

What do I do with it?  If I put it back down on the ground he’ll figure out a way to retrieve it.  As any dog owner will tell you, Ollie will make a point of checking this spot every time we come through here from now on.  I’m not going to put this thing in my pack.  I do the only thing that I can think of and toss it in the stream.  It bobs to the surface and floats away.

We finish our run.

The question is, of course, how did that turkey burger patty get out in the middle of the woods?

What is the story?

It was, of course, the day after Memorial Day, which in the US is a holiday purpose built for grilling meat on an outside barbeque.  A remnant turkey burger is not an outlier.

But how did it get out here?

Was there some sort of mobile forest picnic with a portable meat-grilling apparatus?

Was it transported out here by a scrounging raccoon or possum or coyote?  If so why did they not eat it?

Maybe there is a carnivorous ultrarunning sect in my town that I’m not aware of and this is what they bring on their long runs and it fell out of their pack?  Forget gels! Reach for the protein sensation of the century.  Probably not, the form factor is a bit difficult and most of those runners are vegans.

Or, could it be,  is there a secret cult of pagan worshippers that couldn’t find a chicken to sacrifice to the forest gods, so they sacrificed a pre-made turkey burger patty?  Who is that demigod? Saint Barbeque-stus?  One of the old Saxon gods?  Did they find signs of turkey-burgers at Sutton Hoo?

Or maybe it floated downstream from the pond.  But how did in get through the earthen dam?

It’s a mystery.

Let’s see if we can’t paint a plausible, believable scenario.

Joe-Bob Fatass has his extended family over and he knows uncle Donny is one of those sissies who doesn’t eat real cow meat so Joe-Bob is forced to acquire a box of Turkey Rounds from the store for his holiday barbeque.

Joe-Bob has the big grill set up on the dock by the pond.  He’s cooking away, careful not to burn his hairy potbelly.  He leans in with his custom made Walmart spatula and begins to flip Donny’s Sissy-bird-burger just as Jimmy tosses a fresh Bud-light to him.

This is not Joe-Bob’s first Memorial Day cookout.  He pivots gracefully for a big man and catches the cold can in his unemployed hand, but, much to his chagrin, the physics of it causes him to launch the turkey burger he was flipping into the air.  He glares ruefully as it sails off, is overcome by gravity, bounces meatily once the dock, and splashes into the pond.

Joe-Bob looks at the dog and shrugs.  “Donny’s going to have to nut up I guess.” He opens his frothy cold brewsky and gets back to more important things.

The turkey patty has achieved its freedom and floats contentedly out into the pond spreading a slight sheen of grease as it goes.  A dragon fly lights on it thinking it is some sort of meat-smelling island in the stream, so to speak.

A frog jumps on and flicks out its great sticky length of tongue to snare the insect.

The circle of life.

A slight breeze pushes the patty-cum-raft out into the middle of the pond.  The frog is satisfied with his new domain, until a large mouth bass leaps out of the water and gobbles him down.

The violence of the leaping fish spins and pushes the meat canoe into the current of a deeper channel that leads to the earthen dam outlet.

The turkey boat picks up speed but gets lodged in the sticks and branches clumped against the levee.  Unable to continue, the poultry vessel circles aimlessly in an eddy waiting to sink and rot.

But, before its wandering hope can be lost, a beaver dives nearby for a mussel snack and the powerful flick of its broad flat tail flings the meat boat, now a cylindrical meat projectile, over the dam wall an into the outgoing brook.

A long meandering day and a ½ mile later this greasy, buoyant puck is washed ashore into the leaves and mud of the Scout bridge bank.

And that, my friends is how that turkey burger got out into the middle of the woods to tempt Ollie.

So you see, my part in the story was to return its agency and, now its story will continue as it makes its way back downstream to have more great adventures.