Friday morning I took the dogs for their regular walk down Fouche Gap Road. As usual, I was woolgathering while the dogs sniffed out anything new along the road. We were about halfway down the mountain, just passing a low tree that was completely covered by a mound of kudzu and muscadine vines. Just as I drew up even with it, there was a loud rustling and crashing from it.

The mind works quickly in situations like that. I fully expected a large animal to come out right at me. I thought, what will it be? I went through the possibilities. There are some bears around; I have never seen or heard of one in our area, but the Atlanta news sometimes shows videos of bears in suburban neighborhoods. I have seen coyotes here, but they run away when they see a human. In south Georgia they have wild boars that can do a lot of damage to a person, but I have never heard of one in north Georgia.

So, I wondered, what will it be? Will it attack me? Will the dogs bark? Will they throw themselves at the wild animal that is almost certainly going to be huge and, from the sound of its thrashing, angry?

And then, in the last part of that instant when all those thoughts ran through my mind, a turkey burst out of the vines and flew away.

It happened so fast I really didn’t have a chance to be scared. Startled, definitely. A profane expression might have escaped my mouth at that point.

The dogs must have known it wasn’t going to be dangerous because all they did during the moments leading up to the turkey explosion was stare in the direction of the noise with somewhat greater than mild interest.

Turkeys are noisy flyers. We saw another one on our way back up the mountain. I heard its wings hit limbs as it flew through the tree tops. I wish they would make a little more noise on the ground instead of hiding until the last moment.