Please note: If you haven't read about my previous encounter with Walter, please read it FIRST!
I had a call recently from Wilma, Walter's wife, telling me about the crocheted doilies she was planning to sell at a local bazaar. Frankly, I don't often use doilies - except to make bedspreads and such in miniature - but I always try to buy one from her, since she is an old friend and has always been supportive of my miniature enthusiasms.
"How's Walter?" I asked. "Has he been turkey hunting this year?"
"Oh yeah, he went out again yesterday and came home all white and shaken, like he'd seen a ghost. He hung his hatchet up on the wall and said, 'Well, Wilma, my turkey huntin' days is over. Pour me a cup of that coffee; I need it.'"
"Really over?" I asked. "I thought he'd never give up on that quest." I shuddered as I recalled trying to shoo a poor little turkey away from him last year.
"Well, the dang fool has lost it, I think," Wilma replied. "He told me he had met his match, and that he'd just as soon eat Butterball turkeys and save hisself all that work, anyway."
"I wonder what made him change his mind," I mused. "He's been so persistent about his turkey hunting all these years."
"Beats me," she said, "But I'm glad, frankly.
"It's been kind of stressful worrying about the old goat going out there in the boonies and trippin' over his feet and fallin', or gettin' shot by one of those crazy once-a-year hunters who don't know a shotgun from a shovel."
"Oh, I know what you mean. Seems like every hunting season you hear about more hunters getting shot than turkeys."
"And you know how it is," I said. "We get older and some of the things that appealed to us when we were young just don't matter that much any more."
"To tell the truth," Wilma said just before we hung up, "Our kids are all out of town and I'd just as soon eat at Luby's and go to the movies. Walter'll probably sleep through it, but I'd rather watch Harry Potter while he sleeps than watch him sleep in his chair at home."
I still wonder, though, what really happened that day. Walter's getting up there, but he's pretty tough and darn stubborn, too.
I know one little turkey, however, who is probably just thrilled to learn Walter is out of the hunting business!
