@narfcake
Was it thrown from a helicopter hovering over the unsuspecting crowd gathered below?
“Forty live turkeys were dropped from a helicopter onto an unsuspecting Cincinnati shopping mall below…”
“One just went through the windshield of a parked car. This is terrible, Oh, the humanity!” reported Les Nessman.
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” stated Station Manager Arthur Carlson
(I did a lot of searching for the whole episode… I wonder if a rights holder is actively getting it removed from YouTube?)
Also, that one won’t play embedded. But I felt it was slightly better than this one, which can be played here. So if you don’t want to leave Meh…
As far as i can tell, it’s not even in syndication anywhere. I did a search on the old DVR & it’s not showing at all in the next couple of weeks. They should at least air this episode around Thanksgiving as an annual tradition!
Anyway, the only place i could find it for free (without it being flipped or shrunken to a tiny ratio &/or the audio altered to escape the copyright cops) is the Internet Archive. Not exactly HD, but it’s watchable. Enjoy! (FYI, “Turkeys Away” is first, followed by “Love Returns” in the same video.)
SONGS: “DOGS” - PINK FLOYD (RESTORED VHS VERSION PICTURE FILM UNCUT/DVD (NON-SHOUT FACTORY), “FUN TIME” - JOE COCKER, “IT CAME OUT OF THE SKY” - CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL/SONGS: “PRECIOUS AND FEW” - CLIMAX (RESTORED STATIC SPEAKER MUSIC), “YOU 20TH CENTURY FOX” - RAY CHARLES, “BEAST OF BURDEN” - THE ROLLING STONES, “ABC” - THE JACKSON FIVE (RESTORED STATIC SPEAKER MUSIC).
@narfcake@PhysAssist@tinamarie1974@xobzoo@ybmuG I thought the same thing about the music list… I watched the show as a kid, so i didn’t remember (& probably didn’t even realize at the time) that they used such great stuff. Now that i think about it, i wonder if that’s why it’s not in syndication/constant rotation like other shows of that era, it’s probably too expensive!
@fairchild521@jouest At Thanksgiving, my Dad would always tell the story of the year (before my time) that my older brother shot a wild turkey and proudly brought it home for Thanksgiving dinner. And how as they ate dinner, they had to spit out the occasional shot pellet.
Does Walmart count as a grocery store? Tho truth be told the vast majority of my turkeys get bought at Winn-Dixie when they go down to less than 50 cents a pound. Just smoked one I bought last year over the weekend.
As an aside, 25+ years ago my father-in-law ordered a turducken from a restaurant in Gulf Breeze. It was amazing!
@jouest@pmarin
They run great sales, especially on the weekend. It’s a stock up and save kind of thing.
As an aside, Mom, bless her French heart, used to call it Winnie Dixie all the time!
@chienfou@jouest@pmarin Piggly-Wiggly is several steps up from W-D’s store-brand and brand-you-never-heard-of quality. But then, so is the dumpster behind Pizza Hut.
Since covid my company hands out turkeys a week or so before the big day. Although with back to work this year I think they will be re-initiating Thanksgiving day lunch (full turkey dinner for lunch) so I may be out of luck for a free bird. Oh well…
@tinamarie1974
I used to work for a place that handed out free turkeys for Thanksgiving. Never cared bc I was in my twenty’s (and always worked a double on Thanksgiving) and they just ended up in someone else’s freezer until I forgot about them.
At previous residences, local farms sold them. At current location, a local butcher takes reservations for a certain number. Maybe I’m a sucker, but I do think they are better than the grocery store.
@pmarin@Star2236
We have had numerous wild turkeys passing through and foraging in our ‘yard’ which is more of a suggestion of a lawn than anything- we haven’t mowed [except for the middle and edges of our driveway/lane and a path to the koi], specifically so that we can have a lot of wildlife living there [said turkeys, deer, rabbits, visiting owls, herons, and usually only seen in mid-winter, a weasel that fishes in the pond].
We arranged it so that it has a 'pollinator habitat ’ designation from the NWF, so the town and our neighbors can’t ding us for its state of wildness.
Though, I’m kind of regretting it because the wildlife makes the St. Bernard wild too. Jumping up on the windows-wild, I mean.
@PhysAssist@pmarin
We have a swamp with grasslands inbetween the railroad tracks and our house. We get a lot of wildlife that lives in there. We have deer that come up to our deck and eat, rabbits that have made home under our deck (which we our going to fence off bc they eat everything), wild turkeys, gofers, ducks and whatever lives in that swamp. Ot killed all my vegetable garden last time I planted it with the tiniest hole fence so it’s something small, but I want it gone. Oh and turtles from the pond two doors down
@pmarin@Star2236
I feel your pain- we only plant in containers on our 2nd story deck because of animals eating everything. I forgot to mention that we also have swampy land that borders a preserve called the Bergen Swamp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen-Byron_Swamp
We didn’t know rattlesnakes were a thing in NY until we moved here. Luckily, none have been seen, but opossums and bobcats have.
Ham is from my friend’s grandmother that used to babysit neighborhood kids. Her family was from West Virginia and she made some good, down home, Northern cooking.
@jouest@yakkoTDI moving (part-time) to North Carolina introduced me to all the regional terms and biases. Also don’t say “Well, Bless your heart” if you mean to say something nice. Doesn’t mean that.
@jouest@mycya4me@pmarin@yakkoTDI When I moved to Houston, a Yankee was anybody from north of Conroe. And the definition of a Good Yankee was one that comes to Houston, pays way too much for a house, marries a [despised ethic group of speaker’s choice], adopts six [despised second ethnic group of speaker’s choice] kids, and moves back North taking a loss on the house. Only the values of the variables changed, not the intent.
I am glad I don’t work in that kind of environment today.
Last year I got mine from a feather raffle. For $100 I won a 20lb turkey, chicken and 3 bottles of wine. Other people (don’t know how much they spent, they could have just gotten lucky) won like 5 turkey, 5 chickens and 10 bottles of wine.
Distil Farms in California-- home of the $150 (uncooked) heritage turkey (and worth every penny, I might add,) because I can’t bring myself to dispatch the sweet little New Brunswick turkey hen I’ve been caring for these last six years. . .
“Never name something you might have to eat for dinner”
-Augustus Call; “Lonesome Dove.”
There is an annual Turkey Drop. A guy drops rubber chickens from a cherry picker. There is a race to the prize and different age categories. One year both my children won turkeys. There is usually a one per family limit, but it was during 2020 and not a lot of people showed up.
Once, as kids, Dad took the two oldest boys turkey hunting. We had our hunter’s safety certs and licenses.
Major disappointment. Turkeys are the stupidest animals ever created. We came across a small group of them, and each of us in turn was able to kill one, and the rest of the turkeys didn’t seem to care a bit.
As challenging as shooting milk jugs. And pretty scrawny compared to Butterballs.
I think that was the last time I ever went hunting.
@blaineg There are few disappointments as acute as hauling a 10-point buck to a processor, paying $125 to get it taken apart, vetted and packed, and getting back 42 pounds of uncured shoeleather.
@blaineg I didn’t grow up with hunting and learned it from my in-laws after getting married. Imagine my surprise to learn that after botching a shot on a turkey, a large man could indeed belly flop one to death in a pinch.
@blaineg
it’s funny that you say that because the lore I have always read [I’m not a hunter, but love to read] is that they are wily, hard to fool birds with keen eyesight. The websites I just looked at quoted about a 50% success ratio for hunters overall.
Bow hunting for them appears to be particularly difficult, because with their thick chest plate of feathers, the bow has to fully drawn to get even the sharpest arrows to penetrate it.
That said, I have seen them wander though our ‘yard’ without appearing at all concerned about the dogs going spare [loudly inside the house] at the sight of them.
@blaineg@PhysAssist I will add that there is a significant difference between the behaviors of truly wild turkeys in remote areas, and the turkeys that tend to be found in merely rural vicinities with a substantial human population. I can’t prove it, but I think the dumbass turkeys are at least partially crossed with escaped domesticated birds bred for docility and stupidity, if not wholly so. I know that I have seen genuinely wild turkeys fly far enough to cross an Interstate at speed.
@blaineg@werehatrack
I think you’re probably right.
I hit one once that was flying across the road, and it left a linear dent [and a streak of poo] up the centerline of my hood like someone had rolled a bowling ball up it.
It just flew away completely unfazed by the impact, while I was completely traumatized.
Back when all my cousins got together for holidays; someone would always get a Greenberg Turkey from Tyler, Texas. Since my grandma passed away, we don’t get together like that anymore.
@cbilyak@jouest@Kyeh Wild Turkey starts off as neutral spirit and then gets the contaminants from barrel-aging to bring it to the result that’s in the bottle. There are some barrel-aged potables that I like, but Wild Turkey is not any of them. YMMV, drink what you prefer.
@cbilyak@jouest@Kyeh@tinamarie1974@werehatrack Wild Turkey bourbon gets my recommendation, for those that have a taste for bourbon. Great sippin’ whiskey. Their Honey version has a lower proof (71) and is very throat-soothing, while their 101 proof has more kick. Back when guests were expected at our house, all three of these were kept on hand.
I was hiking once along a cliff face. Very narrow trail. Nasty drop to my right… Wall of rock to my left, probably about 3’ wide… Possible to safely walk but narrow enough to give you the heebie-jeebies if someone was going the other way and you passed them on the drop side. There has been rare frost, so the ground was slippy in a few places too.
Anyhow walking along enjoying the view but also a little spooked by the drop of doom to my side. All of a sudden it sounds like a helicopter taking off in front of me… I had stumbled upon a wild turkey that decided not to fly away until it was close enough to scare the crap out of me.
Those birds are friggin loud when taking off scared me and made me jump back and fall to my death. And now I’m dead…
No … I didn’t fall, I’m not dead, but it did startle me and make me step backwards, fortunately my step was onto solid ground though. Kept my eyes wide open on the trail after that was scared of being scared and made to lose my footing.
@OnionSoup I hiked a trail like that early in the morning once, and I grabbed a pocketful of pebbles to toss on the trail ahead of me so that I could see if anything reacted. I didn’t want to encounter something like a really annoyed porcupine unexpectedly. Nothing was there, and I got some good photos. Sadly, I was shooting Kodachrome, and those slides have all faded horribly now.
@heartny I saw those! I like that guy’s stuff. I got the apple pie plate, and his Halloween haunted house wall hanging. Last year I gave his 2-tier pie carrier to a friend.
We get ours from a turkey farm. My 10 year old wanted to come pick it up last year and sheepishly asked if we’d have to kill it.
Fast forward to me being chastised by my spouse: What is “the family turkey hammer” and why did you make him hold it for the drive out there?!?!
@jouest you’re evil
@jouest You sure are evil- my kind of evil!
/giphy Turkey Hammer…
@jouest @PhysAssist Mahler’s 6th, final movement.
We typically get at least one from a restaurant that smokes them. Then all we have to do Thanksgiving day is reheat it.
@ybmuG brilliant
One year I got a turkey from a radio station event. Does that count?
@narfcake
Was it thrown from a helicopter hovering over the unsuspecting crowd gathered below?
“Forty live turkeys were dropped from a helicopter onto an unsuspecting Cincinnati shopping mall below…”
“One just went through the windshield of a parked car. This is terrible, Oh, the humanity!” reported Les Nessman.
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” stated Station Manager Arthur Carlson
@narfcake @PhysAssist beat me to it!!!
@narfcake @PhysAssist @tinamarie1974 one of the funniest episodes! Now i want to find it somewhere and watch it again!
@narfcake @PhysAssist @ybmuG agree!!!
@narfcake @PhysAssist @tinamarie1974 @ybmuG Not the whole episode, but does this count?
(I did a lot of searching for the whole episode… I wonder if a rights holder is actively getting it removed from YouTube?)
Also, that one won’t play embedded. But I felt it was slightly better than this one, which can be played here. So if you don’t want to leave Meh…
@narfcake @PhysAssist @tinamarie1974 @xobzoo @ybmuG
As far as i can tell, it’s not even in syndication anywhere. I did a search on the old DVR & it’s not showing at all in the next couple of weeks. They should at least air this episode around Thanksgiving as an annual tradition!
Anyway, the only place i could find it for free (without it being flipped or shrunken to a tiny ratio &/or the audio altered to escape the copyright cops) is the Internet Archive. Not exactly HD, but it’s watchable. Enjoy! (FYI, “Turkeys Away” is first, followed by “Love Returns” in the same video.)
https://archive.org/details/wkrp-in-cincinnati-season-01-episodes-07-08-turkeys-awaylove-returns
@ircon96 @narfcake @PhysAssist @tinamarie1974 @xobzoo
Thanks! An impressive collection of music
@narfcake @PhysAssist @tinamarie1974 @xobzoo @ybmuG I thought the same thing about the music list… I watched the show as a kid, so i didn’t remember (& probably didn’t even realize at the time) that they used such great stuff. Now that i think about it, i wonder if that’s why it’s not in syndication/constant rotation like other shows of that era, it’s probably too expensive!
@ircon96 @narfcake @PhysAssist @tinamarie1974 @xobzoo never thought of that angle. I’d bet you’re right. I’ll have to peruse ebay, thrift stores and garage sales.
One year we shot one on our property to have for Thanksgiving. and don’t worry haters we had a license.
@fairchild521 in my experience, this is where you really learn the difference between a svelte wild turkey and a gigantic bred-for-meat one.
@fairchild521 @jouest At Thanksgiving, my Dad would always tell the story of the year (before my time) that my older brother shot a wild turkey and proudly brought it home for Thanksgiving dinner. And how as they ate dinner, they had to spit out the occasional shot pellet.
Does Walmart count as a grocery store? Tho truth be told the vast majority of my turkeys get bought at Winn-Dixie when they go down to less than 50 cents a pound. Just smoked one I bought last year over the weekend.
As an aside, 25+ years ago my father-in-law ordered a turducken from a restaurant in Gulf Breeze. It was amazing!
@chienfou Winn-Dixie is just Meh for people stocking up before Hurricanes
@chienfou @jouest Meh has better snacks than Winn-Dixie.
@chienfou @jouest Is that like Piggly-Wiggly?
@jouest @pmarin
They run great sales, especially on the weekend. It’s a stock up and save kind of thing.
As an aside, Mom, bless her French heart, used to call it Winnie Dixie all the time!
@chienfou @jouest @pmarin Piggly-Wiggly is several steps up from W-D’s store-brand and brand-you-never-heard-of quality. But then, so is the dumpster behind Pizza Hut.
@jouest @pmarin @werehatrack
You are welcome to your opinion.
Buffet at the DoubleTree. If I crave leftovers there’s always Golden Corral the next day or two. Easier than all the hassle.
Since covid my company hands out turkeys a week or so before the big day. Although with back to work this year I think they will be re-initiating Thanksgiving day lunch (full turkey dinner for lunch) so I may be out of luck for a free bird. Oh well…
@tinamarie1974 very legit perk, though!
@jouest I was definitely thankful while it lasted.
@tinamarie1974
I used to work for a place that handed out free turkeys for Thanksgiving. Never cared bc I was in my twenty’s (and always worked a double on Thanksgiving) and they just ended up in someone else’s freezer until I forgot about them.
@Star2236 @jouest I spoke too soon. I got my turkey drop email this morning! 10-15 lb turkeys will be available for pick up on the 20th!
@jouest @Star2236 @tinamarie1974 Nice!
At previous residences, local farms sold them. At current location, a local butcher takes reservations for a certain number. Maybe I’m a sucker, but I do think they are better than the grocery store.
@Skipbidder 100 percent
Neighbor’s compost pile? We never could figure out what they were looking for but seemed to be happy. No, we didn’t eat them.
@pmarin
I had a wild turkey living in my back yard this summer that looked like that.
@pmarin @Star2236
We have had numerous wild turkeys passing through and foraging in our ‘yard’ which is more of a suggestion of a lawn than anything- we haven’t mowed [except for the middle and edges of our driveway/lane and a path to the koi], specifically so that we can have a lot of wildlife living there [said turkeys, deer, rabbits, visiting owls, herons, and usually only seen in mid-winter, a weasel that fishes in the pond].
We arranged it so that it has a 'pollinator habitat ’ designation from the NWF, so the town and our neighbors can’t ding us for its state of wildness.
Though, I’m kind of regretting it because the wildlife makes the St. Bernard wild too. Jumping up on the windows-wild, I mean.
@PhysAssist @pmarin
We have a swamp with grasslands inbetween the railroad tracks and our house. We get a lot of wildlife that lives in there. We have deer that come up to our deck and eat, rabbits that have made home under our deck (which we our going to fence off bc they eat everything), wild turkeys, gofers, ducks and whatever lives in that swamp. Ot killed all my vegetable garden last time I planted it with the tiniest hole fence so it’s something small, but I want it gone. Oh and turtles from the pond two doors down
@pmarin @Star2236
I feel your pain- we only plant in containers on our 2nd story deck because of animals eating everything. I forgot to mention that we also have swampy land that borders a preserve called the Bergen Swamp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen-Byron_Swamp
We didn’t know rattlesnakes were a thing in NY until we moved here. Luckily, none have been seen, but opossums and bobcats have.
@pmarin
Them the big boys!
I am not going to ruin Thanksgiving with turkey. Ham or steak are tradition.
@yakkoTDI steak
@jouest My grandfather liked steak.
Ham is from my friend’s grandmother that used to babysit neighborhood kids. Her family was from West Virginia and she made some good, down home, Northern cooking.
@yakkoTDI I don’t know if you’re actually calling West Virginia the north, but hilarious and charming if so
@jouest @yakkoTDI moving (part-time) to North Carolina introduced me to all the regional terms and biases. Also don’t say “Well, Bless your heart” if you mean to say something nice. Doesn’t mean that.
@jouest @pmarin I am calling it the North because I was hatched here in Florida and all those so called Southern states are up North.
@yakkoTDI omg No turkeys wow! Yes you can do ham too. But not the ones that are pardoned
@jouest @pmarin @yakkoTDI oh I know what the Southern “Bless Your Heart” means, Hehehe. Better better watch out, especially for what comes next.
@jouest @mycya4me @pmarin @yakkoTDI When I moved to Houston, a Yankee was anybody from north of Conroe. And the definition of a Good Yankee was one that comes to Houston, pays way too much for a house, marries a [despised ethic group of speaker’s choice], adopts six [despised second ethnic group of speaker’s choice] kids, and moves back North taking a loss on the house. Only the values of the variables changed, not the intent.
I am glad I don’t work in that kind of environment today.
Last year I got mine from a feather raffle. For $100 I won a 20lb turkey, chicken and 3 bottles of wine. Other people (don’t know how much they spent, they could have just gotten lucky) won like 5 turkey, 5 chickens and 10 bottles of wine.
I will go to Bear Creek Smokehouse, and annual trek for my son and I. The Shoults family’s been cooking my birthday for about 20 years. and ham, too
Distil Farms in California-- home of the $150 (uncooked) heritage turkey (and worth every penny, I might add,) because I can’t bring myself to dispatch the sweet little New Brunswick turkey hen I’ve been caring for these last six years. . .
“Never name something you might have to eat for dinner”
-Augustus Call; “Lonesome Dove.”
There is an annual Turkey Drop. A guy drops rubber chickens from a cherry picker. There is a race to the prize and different age categories. One year both my children won turkeys. There is usually a one per family limit, but it was during 2020 and not a lot of people showed up.
@user80562513 this is some awesome small town nonsense!
VAN GOGH! MANGO! TANGO! AWESOME!
@user80562513 but you need to attend the WKRP’s Turkey drop. It is Awesome, even Les thinks so!
OWLS! TOWELS! JOWLS! AWESOME!
@mycya4me @user80562513 I’m told that they had to move it down to Florence Y’All because of the initial misunderstanding.
My old employer used to give out frozen turkeys as the Christmas bonus.
I much prefer the profit sharing bonus at the current place.
@blaineg yeah, first place I worked we got a $25 gift certificate to a grocery store the week before Thanksgiving each year as our bonus.
This was late 90’s/early '00s, so before the recent inflation but still almost more of an insult than a bonus.
Once, as kids, Dad took the two oldest boys turkey hunting. We had our hunter’s safety certs and licenses.
Major disappointment. Turkeys are the stupidest animals ever created. We came across a small group of them, and each of us in turn was able to kill one, and the rest of the turkeys didn’t seem to care a bit.
As challenging as shooting milk jugs. And pretty scrawny compared to Butterballs.
I think that was the last time I ever went hunting.
@blaineg There are few disappointments as acute as hauling a 10-point buck to a processor, paying $125 to get it taken apart, vetted and packed, and getting back 42 pounds of uncured shoeleather.
@blaineg I didn’t grow up with hunting and learned it from my in-laws after getting married. Imagine my surprise to learn that after botching a shot on a turkey, a large man could indeed belly flop one to death in a pinch.
@blaineg
it’s funny that you say that because the lore I have always read [I’m not a hunter, but love to read] is that they are wily, hard to fool birds with keen eyesight. The websites I just looked at quoted about a 50% success ratio for hunters overall.
Bow hunting for them appears to be particularly difficult, because with their thick chest plate of feathers, the bow has to fully drawn to get even the sharpest arrows to penetrate it.
That said, I have seen them wander though our ‘yard’ without appearing at all concerned about the dogs going spare [loudly inside the house] at the sight of them.
@blaineg @PhysAssist I will add that there is a significant difference between the behaviors of truly wild turkeys in remote areas, and the turkeys that tend to be found in merely rural vicinities with a substantial human population. I can’t prove it, but I think the dumbass turkeys are at least partially crossed with escaped domesticated birds bred for docility and stupidity, if not wholly so. I know that I have seen genuinely wild turkeys fly far enough to cross an Interstate at speed.
@blaineg @werehatrack
I think you’re probably right.
I hit one once that was flying across the road, and it left a linear dent [and a streak of poo] up the centerline of my hood like someone had rolled a bowling ball up it.
It just flew away completely unfazed by the impact, while I was completely traumatized.
Back when all my cousins got together for holidays; someone would always get a Greenberg Turkey from Tyler, Texas. Since my grandma passed away, we don’t get together like that anymore.
Liquor store?
@cbilyak this counts. (We checked.)
@cbilyak @jouest But shouldn’t it be this?
@cbilyak @jouest @Kyeh Wild Turkey starts off as neutral spirit and then gets the contaminants from barrel-aging to bring it to the result that’s in the bottle. There are some barrel-aged potables that I like, but Wild Turkey is not any of them. YMMV, drink what you prefer.
@cbilyak @jouest @werehatrack Yeah, I meant this as a joke. I’ve never had it.
@cbilyak @jouest @Kyeh @werehatrack um…wild TURKEY, seems like an obvious choice
Well done @Kyeh
@cbilyak @jouest @Kyeh @tinamarie1974 @werehatrack Wild Turkey bourbon gets my recommendation, for those that have a taste for bourbon. Great sippin’ whiskey. Their Honey version has a lower proof (71) and is very throat-soothing, while their 101 proof has more kick. Back when guests were expected at our house, all three of these were kept on hand.
@cbilyak @jouest @Kyeh @werehatrack
Well, at least IMHO, you haven’t missed anything…
I was hiking once along a cliff face. Very narrow trail. Nasty drop to my right… Wall of rock to my left, probably about 3’ wide… Possible to safely walk but narrow enough to give you the heebie-jeebies if someone was going the other way and you passed them on the drop side. There has been rare frost, so the ground was slippy in a few places too.
Anyhow walking along enjoying the view but also a little spooked by the drop of doom to my side. All of a sudden it sounds like a helicopter taking off in front of me… I had stumbled upon a wild turkey that decided not to fly away until it was close enough to scare the crap out of me.
Those birds are friggin loud when taking off scared me and made me jump back and fall to my death. And now I’m dead…
No … I didn’t fall, I’m not dead, but it did startle me and make me step backwards, fortunately my step was onto solid ground though. Kept my eyes wide open on the trail after that was scared of being scared and made to lose my footing.
@OnionSoup I hiked a trail like that early in the morning once, and I grabbed a pocketful of pebbles to toss on the trail ahead of me so that I could see if anything reacted. I didn’t want to encounter something like a really annoyed porcupine unexpectedly. Nothing was there, and I got some good photos. Sadly, I was shooting Kodachrome, and those slides have all faded horribly now.
I got this lovely turkey at Target
@heartny I saw those! I like that guy’s stuff. I got the apple pie plate, and his Halloween haunted house wall hanging. Last year I gave his 2-tier pie carrier to a friend.
@heartny That IS lovely, too.
@Kyeh The beautiful workmanship, beading and details of this turkey is amazing. It really is a work of art. I call it my emotional support turkey
@heartny side-eye, judgemental-ass turkey bird.
@heartny @jouest It really captures their spirit, those ornery, irascible curmudgeons of the bird world. Just ask your local postal worker!