Up at the crest of the road, I could see little puffs of dirt rising and drifting against the sky. At first I thought that the wind was the culprit, gathering fistfuls of dust and tossing them into the swirling air. But the action did not coincide with the gusts. I stopped and watched. Again, an eruption of red earth spurted into the air. Something was tossing the dirt hither and thither. I crept up the last part of the steep slope and my feet crunched slightly on the gravel. The dust-tossing stopped abruptly and a long skinny turkey head rose slowly against the horizon, like a snake uncoiling from a woven basket. She stared at me, as if to say, "hmmmm?" The head disappeared and I rose over the crest to see her jogging down the road, her rocking gangly gait hurrying her away from where I had disturbed her dust bath.
A little further on, I looked down at my feet to discover a little baby turkey puffball scurrying across the road into the safety of the grass. "Huh," I said aloud. Again, an adult turkey's head emerged from the grass and seemed very surprised to see me. She suddenly realized what I was and exploded from where she had been nestled down. She screamed, I screamed, and she proceeded to run down the road in the direction I was walking. I tried to guide her progress and eventually succeeded in passing her and pointing her in the right direction back towards her family.