Butters the Wild Turkey, 2019 - 2021, RIP

This is Butters outside our front door, early January, 2021

Butters, the wild turkey, has died; he never learned how to navigate traffic. A neighbour tells me he looked out of his living room window one day and saw three wild turkeys. So this isn't the end, just a chapter. In the local history of Covid there will be a chapter on Butters, he was a celebrity on social media, he brought people together; I would see crowds looking at Butters and talking, people loved that bird. He brought us together and then he was gone. He was everywhere, one day in Montreal West, the next day outside of Police Station Nine, he was famous in Loyola Park, he had a following wherever he went, and then he'd be back on our street sitting in a tree sixty feet up in a snow storm. But he wasn't too bright, the only reason he didn't walk on the road was that there was no food there. Butters had also become a peeping turkey, looking in people's windows. Butters, gone but not forgotten; he gave so much and expected so little.