There is a rafter of wild turkeys who meet in our yard on a weekly basis. They’ve become family, and twenty of them—toms and hens, jennies and jakes—shuffle in at first light and head for the clover patch between the hydrangea tree and the rhododendron. They pump their long necks in unison as they swarm the cracked corn and sunflower seeds the songbirds have knocked to the ground. The scientists and doctors who warned us about avian flu last year now say we can return to keeping our feeders full for the winter, that the possibility of bird flu wanes when you periodically scour your feeder with bleach to eliminate bacteria. Of course we will do whatever is necessary to save this wandering flock, knowing they are more vulnerable to bird flu than songbirds, who often fly alone and flit in and out of the feeder dozens of times a day. Sometimes, when the turkeys have eaten their fill, they move, en masse, across the street, fanning their feathers and squawking at drivers who dare to put an obstacle in their path, though the public has little patience for wild things. Sometimes they linger until nightfall, fly up to a branch in our maple, tuck their beaks under a wing and make themselves shadows until dawn. And I wonder, when I visit you in the memory care unit today, which you will be, the one who wanders off or the one who bows his head.