Turkey Lurkey Doesn’t Lose Her Head over Thanksgiving

Anne Poole has been on Roanoke Island these past few weeks again, researching and literally, digging around. You remember Turkey Lurkey, the turkey who lives outside her house in Wanchese from our blog entries this summer….well….we thought you’d want to know that she didn’t lose her head over Thanksgiving…..and she is very thankful that Thanksgiving is once again, behind her. Turkey Lurkey spent several days in hiding, but she has once again emerged.

Now it could be that Turkey Lurkey was hiding from hurricane Ida instead of Thanksgiving, and that would be with good reason. Anne was visiting down on Hatteras Island when Ida blew in, and suffice it to say that Anne got to spend an extra couple of weeks on Hatteras Island that she really did not intent to spend there. For those of you who don’t know, Hatteras Island is only connected to the mainland by a tiny ribbon called Highway 12. If Highway 12 is flooded, or…..er…..gone….Hatteras Island is literally cut off from the rest of the US. There is a ferry, but it doesn’t run when the weather is rough or the wind is above 30MPH….and any hurricane worth its salt is way above that. Why, a 30 mile an hour wind down there is just a breezy day!

Highway 12 has a bad habit of flooding and also becoming the recipient of sand dunes with a mind of their own that tend to migrate onto the road, forming new dunes, literally overnight….that is until the road guys can get the bulldozers in there to convince those unruly dunes to behave. High tide and a northeast wind alone causes flooding.

Here’s a photo of what the road looks like when the dunes aren’t behaving, and this is what it looked like the day the road was destroyed. By the way, that big dark spot is supposed to be a road.

Here’s what it looks like as the bulldozers try to push the sand back onto the dunes, and off the road.

This road through this section is literally sea on one side all the way to Europe and sound on the other side 30 miles to the mainland with the sea trying to get to the sound with one dune and a 2 lane road the only thing preventing that from happening.

You can see the curve for yourself here on the webcam, assuming it’s daylight. http://www.co.dare.nc.us/webcam/mirlo.php

The locals use this webcam to decide whether to try to go to the mainland or stay home. Suffice it to say Anne was on the wrong side of this section, which was literally destroyed. Turkey Lurkey was the smart one….she went into hiding and didn’t come out until after Thanksgiving.

After Anne finally escaped the clutches of Hatteras Island, she was once again blessed by being in the right place at the right time. Those Lost Colonists are calling to her…they are trying to be found. We just can’t search fast enough! (By the way, this is a shameless plug for volunteers to do records extractions.)

Anne was visiting the court house in Manteo to work on some land records for our project. The lady assisting her turned out to be descended from both Payne and Berry families and she says her family has lived in that area since the 1600s. It’s amazing isn’t it what you can find when you’re really looking….and what was it that Louis Pasteur said…..chance favors the prepared mind! What that really mean of course is that elbow grease literally does grease the skids and if anyone’s skids deserve to be greased, it’s Anne’s.

For those of you who don’t know Anne, she doesn’t know a stranger. As a nurse, she meets a lot of people. One night she called me and told me that she met a Locklear giving flu shots, talked to them about their heritage and got their card and phone number for genealogy follow-up. I had a good laugh, but how many of us overlook the obvious or lose opportunities simply because we don’t ask? Remember that 6 degrees of separation thing…and I’ve come to believe it’s more like 3…..so always ask people about their family and heritage. You’ll be amazed at what you might discover.

And since we’re talking about our collective ancestral “home location”, Roanoke Island, I want to be sure to invite everyone to the Virginia Dare Faire next August. We have folks already making commitments to visit and planning vacations during that timeframe to include spending a day with us at the Faire. Be sure to plan on purchasing tickets to the wonderful Lost Colony play in the evening. The performance on that night is always special for several reasons, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise so I won’t say more.

And what has Anne been up to when not working, trapped on Hatteras Island by a hurricane or in the courthouse in Manteo looking up land documents? Well she volunteers at Fort Raleigh. Today she was stuffing envelopes about next year’s schedule and events…which is why she asked me to remind everyone that Virginia Dare’s birthday is August 18^th and we hope you’ll join us at the Faire. We can use your help throughout the day and you’ll have a wonderful time. Hope to see you there!!!

Roberta and Anne

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