A loud and brave little dog

I was in the laundry folding towels (the laundry is on the other side of my garden wall so that the steamy whooshings from the dryer vent moisten the air around my orchids) when I heard Cakes barking barking BARKING BARKING. Cakes barks at other dogs and bicycles when we're on a walk, but she's well-behaved at home and is silent when I leave her. So I couldn't imagine what all this noise was about--surely not my having left her alone in the garden for three minutes.

Finally, her barking was so LOUD AND URGENT--full-throated, insistent--that I left the laundry (I later discovered a bath towel half-folded in my hands) and went around to my garden gate.

"What on earth, Cakes?" I said to her as I opened the gate. She was looking up to the top of the garden wall--the wall facing the meadow with the walnut trees--barking barking BARKING! I followed the line of her nose and it landed on AN ENORMOUS DARK-FEATHERED BIRD... ENORMOUS! Small head, huge body, lonnng tail.

OHMYGOSHESANDGOLLIES it was a TURKEY! At least, I thought it was a turkey, having only seen a handful of wild turkeys along the road in New England.

The bird stood on the top of the wall almost motionless, without a care in the world (also without much of a brain, I'm told). Cakes kept barking so hard I was amazed--the bird was much bigger than she was. Then it struck me that I wasn't SURE it was a turkey, it could have been a bird of prey, so I picked up the frantic little dog and brought her indoors. Poor child was shaking like a leaf, coughing and trembling...

I gave Cakes great praise, a hug and a cookie, then ran for my bird book, and sure enough, there it was, a female wild turkey. When I went back outside, she was gone.

And at that moment, the Lakers won!

Such is life doing laundry in Ojai...