Turkey Call

My parents and sister are driving in this evening to spend much of the week with us.  In honor of their arrival, we cooked a giant 18 pound turkey for dinner last night. I got it for cheap at a local supermarket that ordered way too many for the Christmas rush and were in desperate need to liquidate their remaining stock.

We cooked it up and ate once the fambly arrived it and it was very good. Afterwards, the wife decided to put the turkey out on the back deck, as we had little extra room in our refrigerator and it's plenty cool outside.  I suggested we needed to put it in something a bit more sturdy than that new gripping cling-wrap stuff stretched over its basting pan, but she would hear none of it. She grew up in Alaska where her family regularly used the out of doors as extra freezer space. My point was that there are plenty of animals here that are both perfectly capable of smelling the delicious scent of turkey AND of climbing deck steps. But she would not hear of it. 

At 5:30 a.m. I was awakened by the sound of a strong wind. Sounded like a major gust outside, just the sort that might whip even grip-wrap off of a turkey and send it flying. I got up, walked to the back door, turned on the light and was just in time to see something small, dark, and cat-like haul ass around the top corner of the deck and disappear down the steps. Dammit!

The turkey itself didn't seem to have been touched. The grip-wrap seemed intact. I took the turkey pan inside and began studiously freeing up space for it in the `fridge. Only after I had space for it did I notice that the grip-wrap had been clawed open toward one end of the bird.

"Was it okay?" the wife asked as I returned to bed.

"No. A cat had gotten into it," I said, feeling a bit triumphant that my prediction had come to pass.

We both got up and went to inspect further. Under the clawed section of wrap was the half of the turkey we'd feasted from earlier in the evening. There, on a mostly clean turkey wing, were some claw and tooth marks, but the rest of the bird, particularly the whole remaining half, was untouched. It seems that I was just in time to rescue it from the thieving critter.

The odd thing, though, is that when I went outside to rescue it, the wind was not blowing at all. Had I dreamed it?