Uncovered Documents by Ima Turkey

We just uncovered some interesting documents as we were cleaning the turkey room recently.  As many of you know, we raise turkeys from chicks to full size.  At that point, we take them to the "park" and they are then key participants in dinners all over the Cedar Valley.  

It appears the trip to the park came none to soon since this last batch of turkeys had among them an individual who was studying our habits a bit too closely.  In fact, this particular bird was looking to take over blog writing duties at some level.  See below what we discovered.
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Staff Writer: Ima Turkey

Individuals looking for an entertaining afternoon should look no further than the Genuine Faux Farm. We have found the guy with the red hat to be extremely amusing as he runs around the farm. In fact, we are conducting a study to find out what sorts of actions/sounds he can be made to respond to (see Pavlov and others). Since he is not really an intelligent being (unlike us turkeys), we have no fear that he will figure out that we are conducting experiments regarding his behavior.

Observations thus far:

• Subject tends to mumble audibly when one of us flies onto or over the fences
• Subject will hesitate in making a choice chasing us (when we're outside the fence) if we divide our numbers and go in opposite directions
• Subject makes strange "hahaha" sounds whenever we run to/fro our room and the gate in the morning.  We think it is a nervous tic of some kind.
• Subject tends to throw yummy produce to locations in the field where one of us is NOT located, though he does tend to have a left/right/forward/back pattern.
• Subject can be trained to bring more tomatoes and cucumbers by eating them quickly.   Similarly, the subject seems to reduce other food types if we show less enthusiasm.  Have not yet managed to get ice cream.
• Subject appears to have limited language ability.  Has attempted to respond to "crowd gobbles."  Enunciation is terrible.  We highly doubt the subject has understanding of the meaning of the words.
• Subject has been trained to allow us to drink out of the hose periodically.  However, Muck learned that subject isn't terribly steady with the hose after getting a face full of water.  Subject has not shown consistency in allowing us to drink out of the hose.  We continue to work on finding a proper prompting action to elicit the desired response.
• Subject appears to respond to sunrise and sunset with certain activities, including bringing us food and water at sunrise and coming out to see us into our room at night.  Has apparently imprinted on us.  Though it does show independence - thank goodness.  Who would want to deal with THAT all day and night?

  

  Ima Turkey at left.

• Subject has been trained to respond and come into view on certain calls, but appears unaware of the desired response once in view.  We remind ourselves that we must take baby-steps in this process.
• Subject appears to be unaware of our scientific endeavors - our ruse continues to work.

We expect to make a final report to the community in December regarding this study.
Respectfully,
Ima Turkey