As I have driven to the airport for hotel shuttle the last few years, I noticed often that a bachelor gaggle of turkey toms of 8-15 toms feed along the woods and meadow there. This spring again I noticed a small, separate pair of toms living and feeding separately about a quarter mile away.
I often speculate as to why these toms are segregated. Are they gay, and not interested in breeding, or are they exiled by the breeding, larger group of toms? Are they genetically deficient in some way, and their being exiled is a way of nature's culling them out of the gene pool? Are the two segregated toms not as aggressive as the larger or more dominant toms, so nature segregates them to save their lives, thus potentially expanding the gene pool? Are they genetically different, and the larger group realizes it, so they are run out, a natural way of preventing inbreeding, and encouraging genetic outreach to turkeys in other counties? Are they toms from foreign turkey flocks that have not yet been accepted or never will be accepted by the turkey flock along the Minnesota River?
Could it be that humans self-cull and are culled and exiled by Nature, as part of some natural master plan that humans do not even realize that they are enforcing and carrying out, as invisibly directed by the Good Spirits, as they also direct the toms at the airport?
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