Decoys
         Christine Spillson

 

 

     When I turned the corner into the first room to find two large, hooded man-shaped suits of camouflage stapled to the wall, I was startled. Even empty of bodies, as they obviously were, they seemed to have too much mass, and they seemed to loom over the rest of the room in a way that felt ominous. A plaque that had been positioned in between the suits identified them as “ghillie suits.” Perhaps they were in the Ward Museum of Wild Fowl Art as superior examples of the form? One of the suits had what looked like fake plastic grass, both green and brown glued all over it, and the other was an interesting beige camo pattern with fringe.

     Hunters use suits like these to hide and pretend to be a bush and/or grass while they lie around and wait for some hapless animal to cross the scope of their rifles. According to the seasonally themed display, these particular suits were used to hunt turkey, an especially intelligent and wily bird.

     This was not what I’d expected to find when I arrived at the museum today and, from the subdued conversations of the other people in the room with me, one middle aged couple and one younger couple with two children in tow, this was not what they had expected either. We were all looking for the World Championship of Decoy carving, but we had all apparently misinterpreted the information on the website and arrived here instead of the event which, it turned out, was being held in Ocean City, Maryland about thirty miles away. I guess everyone decided to make the best of the mistake and check out the museum.

     At a loss of what to do now that afternoon plans had been ruined, we all circled the first small room and its exhibit entitled: “A Most Respectable Bird: The Wild Turkey.” The center of the room was a no man’s land being occupied by a giant carving of a turkey which looked to weigh at least a hundred pounds. The central position of the bird made everyone else cling to the outer edges of the room. No one approached the large and seemingly menacing animal, not even the children who peered at it with expressions that are both fascinated and wary.

     Everyone was muted. We all peered silently at the displays or spoke in hushed voices about them. The theme of the room appeared to actually be less about the turkey being a respectable bird (as Benjamin Franklin famously said) and more about the hunting and eating of it.

     For the interested public, there are offerings like the ghillie suits, a depiction of what was eaten on the first Thanksgiving, arrows made with a fletching of turkey feathers, a taxidermied turkey head hanging upside down from a shelf, several smaller turkey carvings, and a station with two different types of turkey callers and a turkey beard, dry and brittle, connected to a chain.

     From the next room, the one that contained “The Decoy in Time Gallery” exhibit which recreated a wetland environment partially by the random placement of switch grass and pictures of birds, we could hear a continuous soundtrack playing the calls of migrating geese. The longer I stood with the ghillie suits in front of me and the gigantic turkey to my back, the more frantic the sounds of the geese seemed to become.

     I waited for the time when I and the couple and the family moved with a synchronous fluidity in a counter clockwise direction so that I was now faced with the arrows and the dried turkey head dangling from its shelf, the family examined smaller carved turkeys and things made from turkey feathers, and the middle aged couple had moved to the table with the dry broomy turkey beard and the two styles of turkey callers, the central turkey to all of our backs. I felt that we had each settled into our new positions with new walls before us to inspect. I angled myself as much as possible, my shoulder pressing just so slightly into the glass, as I tried to get the right positioning so that I could read what the turkey head was all about. There seemed to be a note just past its head, my eyes skimmed across its eyes, and—

    GOBBLEGOBBLE!!—GOBBLEGOBBLE!

     Crack.

     Shit!

     The noise came from directly behind me. Directly behind me was the giant carved turkey. When I quickly turned to identify where the sudden and loud warbling turkey call came from, it was the first thing I saw. The family had also turned to look at the turkey. The parents looked at me, I looked at them and can see that we were, for a second, all thinking the same thing: Sound effects? Really?

     The confusion lasted for only that single moment. My eyes moved from the family located at the carvings tail-feathers to the couple located on the opposite wing side of the turkey from me. The man had picked up one of the turkey callers, and I guess had been startled by the volume of the call and dropped it. He had been handling (according to the description) a “glass friction turkey call” which had two pieces: one that looked like a little glass coaster and a striker that looked like a small wooden dowel and was made from hickory. Dragging the striker across the glass somehow produces a loud turkey-like sound. The coaster had hit the ground with a cracking sound, but it looked unharmed, and the man, putting one hand on the table, started to reach toward the ground to retrieve it. The table did not appear entirely stable, and the man looked like he was in pain as he bent his knees, so I moved through the turkey territory and walked the few steps required to cross the room through its center to help. The glass was still warm from the man’s palm when I picked it up and flipped it over to see the top which proclaimed the brand with large, loud lettering in the middle: Tramp Stamp.

     Of course.

     How charming.

     In rooms further into the museum, we would see the true purpose of the place. We would see the craft that elevates some carvings from decoy to art, the best of which are made feather by feather. It became difficult for the eye to convince the brain that we were not looking at a bird crashed down onto a table or frozen in flight. In this first room, though, it is a struggle to imagine this impressive talent and undeniable beauty while we slowly circled the poor trapped turkey as we learned how to hunt it.