Rough and gruff rancher Bruce Lang has the look of a hatchet man whose stare alone could chop a turkey in its tracks.

Gobble, gobble, gone.

The Sterling rancher looks like someone who's always practical, whose tender side would never get in the way of good Thanksgiving meal.

But, apparently, looks don't mean much.

Lang, 45, a third-generation rancher, looks like he has been up against everything Mother Nature has dished out and has dished it right back. With a side dish of take that. He has a build to model mountains after, and a wiry blanket of a beard. And he's a billboard of what life in the pastures gets you - a red-hide complexion, and work clothes that look like they've been dipped in dirt-sweat soup.

But that's his outsides. His insides are a whole lot of heart-mush - this rancher that has called at least one turkey his friend-pet. And his reputation precedes him.

"He don't butcher nothing out there," says Francis R. Bauer, 72, of Driscoll, a longtime poultry producer.

Well, Lang does when necessary. He and family want beef for the freezer. So, every year, one member of Lang's about 300-member herd, a steer, becomes entrees. Others are sold. A rancher has to pay the bills.

But most of the Lang animals have a kind of eternal prairie-resort existence.

"Most of the animals we don't butcher," he said.

That would be the 20 horses, the one llama, the four goats, the sheep, the rabbits, ducks, geese, rat, ferret, dogs, cats, donkey, mules and pigs and his not-so-wild-turkey flock that spends their nights sleeping in the farmstead's trees.

Well, sometimes that extra tom turkey or two has to "go," because having multiple toms means sooner or later, without even a proper good-bye, the extra toms each gather up a bunch of the females and run away from home. His flock of about 40 is now down to the teens because of said desertion tactics, as well as visitations from hawks and coyotes.

But for years, there was one turkey that never faced that possibility. That would be "Baby."

Bauer, a poultry raiser with his sister-in-law Beatrice Newland, 71, had hundreds of chickens and some turkeys about eight years ago. But two of the turkeys that had become so tame that they were really much more the pets than produce.

There was "Baby," who became Newland's shadow.

"Wherever Beatrice went, she was there," Bauer said.

And there was the 50-pound tom turkey, named "Tom," which chased everyone even the dogs - but never Newland. He was devoted - following her wherever and let her pat his big chest like a drum until Tom gave his signal that he'd had enough of that by stomping three times with his right foot.

When the duo couldn't keep turkeys any more because of a medical disorder the chickens spread to the turkeys, they didn't have to worry about a new home for Tom. "He was a pig (of an eater)," Bauer remembers. And the tom apparently "obesed" himself into an early grave.

But what to do with 40 pounds of Baby, then age 3? Easy.

"We thought of Bruce," Bauer said.

So that's how Lang got Baby and also a flock of Bauer-Newland geese that the two couldn't bear to butcher. They knew Lang would let them live to a ripe old age.

Bauer assumes it took Baby a while to adjust to Lang.

But any adjustment period aside, Baby remained gentle to a fault at the Lang ranch. She became especially attached to Lang, who is a second-generation turkey petter. Lang's dad, Donald Lang, had a pet turkey when he was kid.

Lang's Baby would follow anyone, but she would leave a crowd of others to be with Lang if he called her name, said Lang's wife, Wanda Lang, 43.

If Lang was up in the combine working on it, Baby was right beside him. If he was working under the pickup, Baby would crawl underneath, squat and watch with an unbroken stare. When a son was doing some work in the rear seat of his car once, there was Baby was sitting in the front seat watching.

"She just enjoyed being with people," Lang said.

She didn't impress everyone. A family friend wasn't happy after he drove up in a new motorcycle, parked it, went in the house, came back out minutes later and Baby had already claimed the bike's new seat. Lang, who didn't quite understand the fuss, gently lifted her off the still-clean seat, stopping his friend's turkey-scare tactics almost before they began.

Lang always knew to have peanuts in his pocket - her favorite. School classes would come out to tour the ranch, take hayrides, and of course to feed peanuts to Baby. She would take the peanuts, without injury, out of their hands.

Thanksgivings would come and go for Baby. No reason for concern. The Langs find their centerpiece turkeys at the grocery store.

The running joke was that the only way Lang would have Baby for Thanksgiving would be if she were on a telephone book sitting next to him.

She never did come into the house.

Baby made it past another Thanksgiving but not much more; she was found in 2002 in the barn stall reserved for her. Old age did her in, apparently.

Lang said he didn't know quite what to say for a while when schools called him after that to get a Baby and Lang ranch field trip experience.

Oh, Baby.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com.)