We moved to the country a year after we were married and bought a little piece of land to call our own. We had a small lake bordering part of our property and around it were traces of old roads that were once going to places now forgotten.

We built a small home and had plenty of room for a garden and room to have a few animals! The first few years we gardened a lot and that was fun. We canned a lot of what we grew and gave a lot away like potatoes, corn, squash. 

I had a Honda Trail 90 that my wife and I rode a lot. She liked it because it was automatic and she could ride it to town occasionally to get a few groceries. It had a milk crate on the back! I liked it as it had a Hi/Lo range transmission and I did a lot of partridge hunting and exploring.

I liked taking those old roads on the backside of our lake and wondered who would have been driving on them and where were they going? On one hunting trip I happened to find traces of a road I hadn’t been on before, so I started out on it and after a mile or so I started dodging trees growing in the roadway and then the trees were thick enough that I left my trail bike and went on foot. After a while I made it through the patch of trees and came to a bog. The roadway circled around it and on the other side of the road there was a ridge that curved with the road. As I was walking the road I came to a spot half way up the ridge that had an indentation, so wondering what had caused this I hoofed it up there and figured there must have been a tree there at one time. It wasn’t a huge hole and there was a lot of grass in it so I sat down. It was like sitting in a big bean bag chair. The sun was shining, it was warm and I fell asleep.

Some time had passed and when I awoke the sun was fading so I sat there a minute. As I was getting up to head back to my trail bike I caught some movement on the bog side, just off of that old roadway in the taller grass and out of good eyesight! I was looking hard but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. It kept moving in that grass till it was near the far end of the bog and then it moved out onto the old road. It was quite a ways away, but it looked like a small animal and then a small person and then it was gone. I made my way out of there and managed to get home in the dark.

I didn’t go back there but I often wondered what I had seen that day?

A couple years passed and my wife and I decided to get some type of livestock, nothing too big. First we were going to get chickens and we were going to let them wander, but then we thought that they might not do to well as we have a lot of fox, owls, and coyotes. So instead I bought 6 turkey chicks and built a coop and put up a nice secure fenced area for them.

I got them at 3 days old and the kids got a big kick out of them as I kept them in the furnace room for safe keeping. Every time I would come in the house the kids would have the turkey box out and the turkeys would be on the couch. Well, it wasn’t long and they were big enough to go into their new pen and coop. For some reason one of those turkeys attached itself to me and would follow me everywhere when it was out of the pen. One day I was sitting outside behind the house and this turkey was clucking and grooming me. I would pet her neck a little and then a June bug happened to land on my arm and the turkey immediately pecked it and ate it. Well I thought that would be a good name for this turkey. One day our dog came around when June Bug was by me and she chased the dog away. She didn’t want that thing anywhere near me, this would make me smile and laugh.

As time went on that summer I learned a lot about those turkeys. They liked certain things to eat by color. One day we were cleaning out a freezer and I had a few bags of raspberries, strawberries, and some blueberries. Also I had a big tomato! I put my hand through the fence holding the tomato first and almost lost my thumb! Two of the turkeys ran over to me and pecked the daylight out of that tomato and one got my thumb, that sure hurt! They loved the raspberries and strawberries but not the blueberries. They just walked on them? One day I was tilling the ground with my tiller and June Bug was walking beside me when I tilled up a few big worms. I grabbed them and put them in front of her but she just walked on them, not interested at all!

I would listen to the turkeys when they were alone talking to each other and I would try to imitate them while hiding out of sight. They would stand as near to me as they could, but when they could see me they would just turn around walk away and go silent. All except June bug she would want to come out and follow me!

As fall started coming on, we happened to live in an area with a lot of swamp around us and at night the fog would come and cover the swamp and surround our property. This was kind of nice, we felt cut off from the rest of the world! On one of these mornings, I went outside quietly to feed the turkeys, and I made my way to the pen area, but I didn’t hear anything. Usually I could hear some clucking from them, so I got nervous. I thought something had gotten in the pen, but as I got close, I could see all the turkeys lined up on the back side of the fence towards the woods. They were just standing there silent and motionless.

I quietly slipped into the garage and went to the back since there was a knot hole in the siding. I could see the turkeys standing at the fence and on the outside was a little creature facing them. It was close to 2 feet tall and was making noises that the turkeys seemed to like! Whatever this was had a hat of some kind, leggings, and a coat. I couldn’t tell what they were made of, and it looked like it was wearing small boots that were made of fur.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. I went back out to the front of the garage and quietly went up to the turkey pen behind the turkeys, but I must have made a noise. Two of the turkeys moved and the little creature saw me and bolted for the woods behind him! I stood there a while trying to figure out what I had seen and what it was? I went in the house and told my wife I had seen something by the turkey pen, but she thought I was making this up! 

Now every time I went outside I was expecting to see this creature, but nothing! After a time I quit looking and went about my summer.