A bold wild turkey, the The Horse, a rifle, and some bird seed

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As I returned to my truck at work this morning, I encountered a wild turkey merrily munching my only snow pea plant at Ground Squirrel Gardens. She saw me, and continued to munch away, while her five fellow hens pecked away at the ground, as turkeys do. She seemed entirely unaware of the gravity of what she was going. Visions of her surrounded by stuffing and cranberries danced through my head.like Sugar Plum Ferries. I said, softly, "You have incredible chutzpah, eating my only snow pea plant two days before Thanksgiving." She took a couple of steps back, while her sisters continued pecking away at the dirt. I retreated to my truck to retrieve my. 22, knowing full well that my .22 was safely at home, in my closet. As I returned to my truck, she returned to my snow pea plant to finish it off. I just shook my head. Reaching into the back of my vehicle, I retrieved a bag of bird seed that I keep with me in case a kid client wants to go to Borges Ranch and visit the chickens. Returning to the scene of the crime, I scattered the bird seed among the turkeys, and they thanked me by pecking away excitedly. Why reward these beastly birds for their irreverent antics? When I later Googled "chutzpah" I found a story that I had not known about. According to Wikipedia, In Jewish lore, Moses actually challenged God, and was rewarded for it! I'll put the quotation below, though I won't attach the link (I'm going to dig up a turkey picture for this post). In reality, the reason I grabbed my seed is that I like turnkeys. Like chickens, they make me laugh for no particular reason, and laughter is healthy. Do you have turkeys where you live? What does the word "chutzpah" mean to you? Its roots are in Hebrew and Yiddish, and it originally had negative connotations. But it has come to mean "nerve," whether good or bad. For those who are interested, a quotation from Wikipedia on Chutzpah: Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis distinguishes the meaning of chutzpah as stubbornness and contrariness from what he calls a tradition of "spiritual audacity" or "chutzpah klapei shmaya": We are conventionally raised to believe that Jewish faith demands unwavering obedience to the law and the law-giver. That attitude tends to cultivate a temperament of compliance and passivity, For conventional thinking, "talking back to God" smacks of heresy. But a significant genre of religious, moral and spiritual audacity toward the divine authority—"chutzpah klapei shmaya"—finds a place on honor in Jewish religious thought. As an example, Schulweis cites a case where Moses argues with God about the justice of His commands: For Moses, that God should "visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation" (Exod. 20:5) is an unacceptable form of group punishment akin to the morally indiscriminate punishment of Sodom. Challenging God's pronouncement of the punishment of the sons for the sins of the fathers, Moses argues with God, against God, and in the name of God. Moses engages God with fierce moral logic: Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteousness of Abraham and the idol worship of his father Terach. Does it make moral sense to punish the child for the transgressions of the father? Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteous deeds of King Hezekiah, who sprang from the loins of his evil father King Achaz. Does Hezekiah deserve Achaz's punishment? Consider the nobility of King Josiah, whose father Amnon was wicked. Should Josiah inherit the punishment of Amnon? (Num. Rabbah, Hukkat XIX, 33) Trained to view God as an unyielding authoritarian proclaiming immutable commands, we might expect that Moses will be severely chastised for his defiance. Who is this finite, errant, fallible, human creature to question the explicit command of the author of the Ten Commandments? The divine response to Moses, according to the rabbinic moral imagination, is arresting: By your life Moses, you have instructed Me. Therefore I will nullify My words and confirm yours. Thus it is said, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers." (Deut. 24:16)