Graded papers today in lieu of blogging. Only have one item to share, appropriate for the holiday.

Jill Lepore in the New Yorker (11/28) had a nice piece on wild turkeys. Apparently, they are out in full force in New England. Bostoners — any sightings?

Here are her words:

“Wild turkeys have returned to New England. They’re strutting on city sidewalks, nesting under park benches, roosting in back yards — whole flocks flapping, waggling their drooping, bubblegum-pink snoods at passing traffic, as if they owned the place. You meet them at cafes and bus stops alike, the brindled hens clucking and cackling, calling their hatchlings, their jakes and their jennies, the big blue-headed toms gurgling and gobble-gobbling. They look like pilgrims, grave and gray-black, drab-daubed, their tail feathers edged in white, Puritan divines in ruffled cuffs.

“In Massachusetts, you can hunt wild turkeys (since 1991, the state’s official game bird), but only with a permit, only during turkey-hunting season, and only so long as you don’t use bait, dogs, or electronic turkey callers. You are, to be fair, permitted to whistle. ‘Sit and call the birds to you,’ the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife advises. Yet beware: ‘Do not wear red, white, blue, or black,’ or the gobblers, the full-grown males, might attack. Ben Franklin offered the same caution: if a turkey ran into a British redcoat, woe to the soldier. This, my fellow Americans, may be how we won the war.”