gratitude-a-thon day 516: gobble, gobble

There are turkeys in Brookline, and I’m not talking about on sandwiches. I’m talking about wild turkeys, and I”m not talking about the whiskey either. Real, live turkeys. A whole big family of them. Brookline, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, is about 20 minutes from downtown Boston, which means it’s 20 minutes away from a place turkeys should only be found at the Symphony Hall Whole Foods, or the Prudential’s Star Market. But even though Brookline is a completely inappropriate place for them to live, I kind of love that they live here.

Like, I was just sitting at my desk today, gazing out the window, trying to will the sun t comet, and avoid working, if you must know, and there was a turkey bobbling around my neighbor’s yard. This somehow just perked me right up, made me smile, and lastly wonder, as I always do when I see them, how they have managed not to get flattened by the myriad of cars that speed around town.

I haven’t pinpointed exactly what it is about seeing the turkeys that gives me a little lift, but I’m sure it has something to do with the absurdity, the wrongness of their locale, the sweetness of the people who stop their cars while the turkeys parade across the street, sometimes taking as long as five minutes. I once got caught in a turkey gathering in the middle of the road near our house, and Ally actually had to get out of the car and try and guide the determined-to-stay-right-where-they-were group out of the street so I could drive past. It made us giggle and stop our day to consider the wild life in our midst. And maybe that’s part of what’s so nice about having them around, they do make you stop. And stopping is good. Grateful the whole feathered fam, which I have hosted in my yard, for apparent loud Italian get togethers, came to roost here.