How the Turkey Hid Her Eggs

When the Storm God Rides, by Florence Stratton, collected by Bessie M. Reid [1936], at sacred-texts.com

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How the Turkey Hid Her Eggs

The big turkey cock is so proud of himself that he does not want his wife to pay attention to anything but him. He looks for her eggs when she lays, and if he can find them he breaks them with his beak. If the eggs have hatched he sometimes kills the little ones. There was a time, so says an Indian story, when the turkey's eggs were white. They could be easily seen. The turkey gobbler found so many of them that his wife decided to hide them.

She began hiding them under dead leaves and twigs in the woods. The old man turkey looked everywhere for the eggs, but they were nowhere to be seen,

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for they were lying under their little brown blankets. This made the turkey cock's wife happy. She kept on putting leaves on her white eggs, and often the dew fell and wet the brown leaves as they lay on the eggs. In time the dew washed some of the color from the leaves. It dripped upon the white eggs and spotted them.

So it came to pass that the turkey's eggs became spotted with brown. She no longer had to hide them, because they looked so much like dead leaves that old man turkey could not see them any more as he walked around in the woods.