Trapping the Midnight Turkeys

The other day my 7 year old was getting frustrated because the trap she had been building while her younger sister climbed the tree was not working. After a short discussion about the value of failure as a learning opportunity I realized that she did not actually know what she wanted to trap and as a result it was hard to know whether or not the trap would work.

We determined that the trap would be too small for a bear and too big for a mouse, but perhaps a bird would be the right size.  She thought maybe a flamingo.

Now we live in Ottawa where it has looked like this for the past six months.

As you might imagine we don’t get a lot of flamingoes here.

So we had to decide on another bird of comparable size that might fall into the trap.  We settled on midnight turkeys as a likely target.  So we consulted the midnight turkey guide book.

We opted not to dig a giant hole in the garden, but decided that a sign directing the turkeys to the trap would be the most effective component of the trap.

Once the trap was laid, the girls declared that they would stay up until midnight to see if the trap worked.  This is where it turns into a Daddy-trap. They put on two layers of pyjamas so that they would stay warm while they waited outside until midnight. We pointed out that Matthew goes to sleep and wakes up around midnight to check out the trap. They agreed they would wait in bed and maybe read until midnight so long as we left the curtains open and the windows open a crack so that they could hear the turkeys – who are naturally quite silly and would be loud once they were in the trap.  Lots of giggling and laughing while they take advantage of being in the trap.  Of course they would order pizza and do all kinds of things.

Unfortunately the girls fell asleep and missed the turkeys, but in the morning we could tell that they had been there. The trap had been sprung, an empty pizza box as evidence that the turkeys had been there.

The turkeys had clearly been playing silly games and they left proof in the neighbouring trees.

Sadly none of the Midnight Turkeys stuck around for breakfast.  Maybe next time.