Saturday, October 11, 2008

A turkey treat

I arrived home last night to find a whole flock of wild turkeys in my meadow. They scattered when I drove up, of course, but for a long time afterward we could hear them chattering their insane gobbledygook from the woods above the house.

The dog, off gallivanting with her best dogfriend, Duke, missed all the excitement. This morning I walked about a mile up the road to retrieve Hopeful (which, come to think of it, makes me a Labrador Retriever retriever), and I gave her a stern lecture about the virtues of staying close to home. "You could have been chasing turkeys!" I told her, but she just sat there looking hopefully up at me with that familiar expression that says, "Did you bring me a treat?!"

So now Hopeful is home and the turkeys have dispersed and I'm grateful that I stayed up late last night grading the big pile of midterm essay exams, with only a few turkeys in the bunch. I worked students pretty hard on these exams but they stepped up and met the challenge with insight and perseverance and only a modicum of gobbledygook. I'm out of the woods and ready to enjoy my fall break--and, like my dog, I'm looking forward to the treat, despite the occasional turkey.

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