turkey hallucination update.

it seems that the urge to own turkeys is no mere hallucination brought on by over-exposure to adolescents.

i've spent quite a bit of time over the past few days trying to locate a source for turkey chicks. i had always assumed that turkeys would be no harder to find than chickens. apparently, i am quite naive.

i started out my search with a fairly specific goal in mind - i didn't want any commercial white turkeys, and i didn't want wild turkeys because i suspect they would fly away - what i was looking for was your good, old-fashioned brownish barnyard turkey.

i remember when i was little going to visit some neighbour or other's house and watching the turkeys in the yard. they were big, prehistoric, bronze coloured things who thought they owned the place. that couldn't have been more than sixteen years ago: if people could find old-fashioned turkeys then it had to possible now.

what i forgot was that sixteen years ago most small towns had a hatchery - i remember visiting the one in stettler - and far more people kept a small flock of poultry in their yard.

a lot had changed since then. the barnyard turkey, it would seem, is another example of how globalization destroys rural economies.

but disaster has been averted - i may have finally located a supplier of big, rusty coloured turkeys. they're in ontario, and i know that isn't really in keeping with my new fervour for local, but a guy's gotta start somewhere.

of course, this means that i really need to find an alpaca.

"umm, stu," you ask, "what's with the jump from turkey to alpaca?"

dear reader, trouble yourself not. i have not lost my mind.

you see, while i think that turkeys are one of the coolest species on earth, my beautiful wife, kayla, feels that the llama is one of the coolest.

since llamas are a large, spitting force of darkness on the earth, the alpaca, their shorter, cuddlier cousin, seems a suitable alternative.

this, my friends, is how farmyards are made.

it is here, dear reader, that i shall leave you. if the opportunity arises you're welcome to drop by the farm.

don't be afraid of the labrador, and you don't need to worry about the chickens or alpaca.


but i'll warn you now, i can't vouch for the turkeys.