A video of three turkeys chasing each other around a tombstone in Fargo, North Dakota, had people wondering if the turkeys were having some kind of weird little seance.
The viral video, posted on Paul Eickhof’s Facebook Page, shows three turkeys circling around the tombstone so many times, all the snow around it is gone. The birds also showed no signs of stopping this odd pursuit.
The tombstone itself had the name “Harris” on it, which had some commenters on the original post of the video joking it was all about the state of Kamala Harris’ political career.
Eickhof himself, meanwhile, wrote a simple “Three peat,” under his video, which has more than 8000 likes so far, almost 1,000 comments, and more than 1,500 shares.
Other commenters suggested that the tombstone would be hiding a treasure, if life were a video game, and some commented that the turkeys were all males — meaning they never ask for directions.
Some thought the turkeys must have been trained to do that, while others suggested it was a seance of some sort.
You Can’t Catch Me
Corinna Scahde, sitting in her living room at Schadey’s Acres near Laramie, Wyoming, was laughing when she happened to see the turkey trot video — and all the comments suggesting weird things to explain their odd duck behavior.
All she has to do to see weird antics from turkeys is just look outside her window. She raises yaks and about 300 heritage turkeys, and sees them doing odd things all the time. The turkey chase is the most common.
While the turkeys were located in North Dakota, Corinna Schade of Schadey’s Acres near Laramie, Wyoming, had to laugh when she saw the video. This was behavior she’s seen a million times on her farm, where she raises yaks and about 300 heritage turkeys.
All she has to do to see similar behavior is look out her window. At any given moment, there will be some unfortunate tom turkeys playing ring around the tractor, ring around the shed, or ring around whatever is handiest to hide behind, as the toms work out who is at the top of their pecking order.
“Those are probably three young toms,” she said. “And it’s their hormones. They will just keep going and going. I mean their target is the one in front of them, right. So, they are going to go around and around that all day.”
Eventually, one of the birds will tire out, allowing another to nip a tail feather. Or their target’s head.
“They just love to grab the skin on the head and just like, yank them around,” Schade said. “I’ve got one turkey I’ve had to isolate, because his eyes are now so swollen he can’t see. These toms can be just vicious.”
Not A Seance
While plenty of humans were speculating about the afterlife and weird seances, Schade thinks what probably caused the turkeys to play run around the tombstone was just their natural instinct.
“I can just see it happening,” she said. “The first turn would have been the one that did it. And then they just didn’t feel like leaving that tombstone once that started, because there wasn’t a better option for hiding.”
Continuing to beat a path around the tombstone also made it harder and harder to escape, Schade added.
“It’s a bit of a pickle, because jumping up out of that divot they’ve made is going to take some energy, and they’re probably tired,” she said.
With a bird behind each bird, each hot on the bird in front, no smart bird wants to be the dumb slow one. That feels like a sure route to being caught and pecked by the angry tom behind.
The birds might also be relatively young, Schade added, and not as experienced at getting out of such a situation.
“They could have been wild ones, which tend to be a little smaller,” she said. “But they looked juvenile to me, because I didn’t see any beards coming off their chests.”
Like Mob Bosses
Turkeys, Schade has observed, are huge backstabbers and can be really quite violent. Especially the males, who act like they are little mob bosses. Al Capone has nothing on any of them.
The tom turkeys that fancy themselves big bosses will keep chasing after males they consider lesser, inflicting serious injuries, or sometimes even killing their rivals off. All so they have their own little harem of hens to themselves.
Because of that, Schade has actually had to train some of her dogs to watch over her turkey flock and intervene if there’s any trilling.
“When they go after each other, they start with this little trill,” she said. “And then it goes to pecks, and they just start beating each other up big time.”
Schade has noticed the fighting get worse as breeding time rolls around when the stakes are much higher for both food and mates.
Wild turkey flocks have been known to form turkey gangs —mobs generally composed of sibling turkeys that have grown up together — to vie for both females and food.
These gangs will each have their own internal pecking orders, which is determined over and over again, particularly if anything happens to a member of the flock.
“There’s definitely a hierarchy,” Schade said. “And they’re always looking for their place. If one of the flock gets like — we’ve had a lot of predation lately, and I think that’s why they’re fighting so much. It changes the hierarchy. They have to go through the pecking order all over again.”
Not having enough hens to go around can also lead to more fights.
“They say the best ratio is like one to five hens for each male,” Schade said. “Otherwise, there’s too many males, and things start getting crazy.”
Schade’s flock right now is approaching 50% Toms, and she knows that’s part of the reason she’s seeing a lot more spectacular chases and fights.
The Fights Can Be Epic
Bird fights in the wild are rather epic, with each bird holding their wings out wide, head stretched as high as possible and then circling each other like two knife fighters.
They will strike each other’s wings, kick with their feet, body slam each other, grasp one another by the face or neck, sending feathers and dirt flying in the air.
Necks entwine as they try to pull each other down, and one bird will try to straddle the other, like a cowboy riding a bronc.
Those beaks, meanwhile, are not just for show. If they see an opportunity to stab the other bird and take out an eye, that’s exactly what they’ll do.
The winner is whichever bird remains, the loser sent running off, minus a few feathers and some pride.
Since seeing the three turkeys chasing each other around a tombstone, Schade has thought about putting a tombstone out in her yard, to see if she can get some toms chasing each other around that, rather than just beating each other up.
“That would be funny,” she said. “But it’s totally normal Tom behavior. Nothing creepy there. They’re not having a seance. They’re just trying to get each other.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
