lunch walks on Thursdays

I have been taking walks in Rutland State park on Thursdays during my lunch hour. This Thursday I was walking (I have about an hour) and guy stopped as he was driving by. He saw my abnoxiously large camera hanging on my neck and asked what I was taking pictures of. I told him whatever... and he showed my a picture of a moose... and also, that there is a goose that might be nesting in the field up the road on the left. So, I thought that it might be worth risking being overtaken by ticks.... .wait, lets rant about ticks for a tiny bit.

ticks...they weren't here when I was a kid.... not at all. I never even saw a tick when I was a kid. They were like tapeworms....you kind of heard about them...and thought they were disgusting and minorly interesting in an invasive sort of way. And, now they are everywhere.... I walk out there and have, without exagerating, like five wood ticks clinging to my close by the time I get back to the car....I have yet to ever see a deer tick (thank God) but my father-in-law got bit by one. Yeah... I hate ticks!!

Back to the walk. I was looking over in the field and as I cleared a bunch of trees, I saw a head duck down into the grass about two hundred feet away.... pretty far. So, I jumped into the tick lair and started wading through the knee length grass. The "goose" never poked its head up again, so I headed to where I thought it ducked down About tweny feet from the treeline a turkey that had bedded down in the grass erupted up about three feet away from me. It nearly killed me. I never saw it before it flew up. It ran over to the wood line, fluffed up its feathers and made very annoyed little chirping sounds. I KNOW this bird wanted to tear my eyes out and gobble them down. At any rate, I looked down and saw a tiny little baby turkey (what are those called?!) It was tiny and hiding in the grass. I bent down and snapped apicture and apparently got too close. At some other call, all of the chicks started back toward their mom. I think I saw about five little shuffles in the grass...

I turned around and left them to their mom...