A day late with this week’s eldritch, or creepy thing, but I was at a farm yesterday, up close and personal with birds with wattles, namely, turkeys.
So the wattle is that ugly skin thing hanging over his beak. Or, in the immortal words of Wikipedia:
A wattle is a fleshy caruncle hanging from various parts of the head or neck in several groups of birds, mammals and other animals. A caruncle is defined as ‘A small, fleshy excrescence that is a normal part of an animal’s anatomy’. Within this definition, caruncles in birds include wattles, dewlaps, snoods and earlobes.
Wikipedia goes on to say: In birds, wattles are often an ornament for courting potential mates. Large wattles are correlated with high testosterone levels, good nutrition and the ability to evade predators, which in turn indicates a potentially successful mate.
So that is supposed to impress girls?? Yikes. Looks pretty horrorshow as far as I’m concerned. I mean, how far a walk is it from this –
To this?
Giant Bug from Naked Lunch
Except that the turkey is even ickier looking than the giant hallucinated bug… but at least he doesn’t smoke.