{"id":19909,"date":"2017-04-04T07:11:17","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T14:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=19909"},"modified":"2017-04-26T20:27:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T03:27:05","slug":"tomfoolery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=19909","title":{"rendered":"Tomfoolery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I commented that we should keep an eye out for male Wild Turkeys in display. It is that time of year. And there they were: not one, but two.<\/p>\n<p>After watching the two toms\u00a0for a while, it struck me that there was something odd about their behaviour. Each was decked out in its striking courting plumage and there were a number of females in the neighbourhood. Yet, rather than seriously approaching the ladies, the two toms stuck so closely together that they were almost always touching.<\/p>\n<p>Were they more interested in each other than the ladies? Well, sort of. Neither seemed interested in the other sexually, but saw him as competition. It seems to have been a example of<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>keep your friends close, but your enemies closer<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>which was memorably stated by\u00a0Micheal Coreleone in the movie, <i>Godfather, Part II<\/i> (1974), but which originated in Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli&#8217;s, <i>The Prince<\/i> (1513).<\/p>\n<p>The two turkey toms appeared inseparable.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-19912\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/turkey170330as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Females were plentiful, but so obsessed were the males\u00a0with blocking the other&#8217;s access, that neither made conquests. It was all rather funny and pathetic.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-19910\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/turkey170330cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So the toms wandered away loveless, each presumably pleased the other had been thwarted.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-19913\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/turkey170330bs2.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"690\" height=\"690\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I commented that we should keep an eye out for male Wild Turkeys in display. It is that time of year. And there they were: not one, but two. After watching the two toms\u00a0for a while, it struck me &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=19909\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19909"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20289,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19909\/revisions\/20289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}