The summer was good, we had put in a big garden. My wife planted a lot of different veggies! You name it, we had it. This year one thing I tried new was butter beans. I had been out to Oklahoma and had them in a restaurant and really liked them. Well we didn’t have much trouble with animals all summer but every once in a while, things would come up missing? A couple ears of corn, even a few potatoes, and an onion or two. Then I happened to see a tiny footprint. I didn’t know what to think, but then my mind went back to the little creature I had seen by the turkeys last spring!

Well, now I was paying a little more attention to what was going on around the yard. After a couple of weeks had gone by, I came outside on a foggy morning and as I went behind the house, I saw it again. That little creature! It was sitting on one of my fire wood stacks that I had made over the summer. I stopped in my tracks and just looked at it, still wondering what it was. Well this time it didn’t run away, it just sat there watching me. Finally I saw a little arm raise like a hello gesture and then I returned the greeting.

Then I heard his voice in my head.

This little creature who was about 1 1/2’ tall said his name was ODO! I told him my name and then we put our arms down and to my disbelief he hopped off the wood pile and came closer to me. I told him about the little foot print in the garden, and I almost thought there was a faint smile on his face.

I sat down on a log and I asked him where he had come from and why he had chosen to come here? ODO said a year ago he had heard a noise coming from here that had echoed across the swamp next to our place. It was a sound his kind hadn’t heard for many, many years, so he and one of his kind journeyed around the swamp from beyond our lake. The sound you see was the turkeys that we had gotten.

Turkeys had been hunted out long ago in this area, but ODO said he still remembered their calls and couldn’t believe he had heard them again. Minnesota had a program a few years back where they were promoting the raising and releasing of turkeys into the wild to get them repopulated again!

ODO told me he had seen me many years ago when I had been near his home. He said I had fallen asleep on the side of a hill.

I remembered that spot and I asked him if I might be able to see where he lived.

He said he would ask the others! 

Their kind had been here long before any of our kind had come. They were not safe anymore as they were losing forest homes because more and more people like me were moving into their area. They are gradually leaving for a safer place to live! ODO said that many had left already and he pointed in the direction to the North and East. He said there are no people like us where they are going. 

I kind of figured he was referring to the Boundary Waters area.

He said his kind had lived there long before here. Having told me this he said he had to leave now, but when he came back he would leave a sign for me so I would know he was here. He picked up a turkey feather that was laying on the ground and told me he would hang it in a lone apple tree in front of my house then he lifted his arm waving good bye as did I and he disappeared into the edge of the forest.