While we wait for the Turkish Army to actually cross the border, another kind of Turkey attack plagues a United States consumed by the tragic but exceedingly boring news of the California wild fires:

On a recent afternoon, Kettly Jean-Felix parked her car on Beacon Street in Brookline, fed the parking meter, wheeled around to go to the optician and came face to face with a wild turkey.

The turkey eyed Jean-Felix. Jean-Felix eyed the turkey. It gobbled. She gasped. Then the turkey proceeded to follow the Dorchester woman over the Green Line train tracks, across the street, through traffic, and all the way down the block, pecking at her backside as she went.

“This is so scary,” Jean-Felix said, finally taking refuge inside Cambridge Eye Doctors in Brookline’s bustling Washington Square. “I cannot explain it.” {emphasis mine}

Yes, apparently the turkey population of Massachusetts is on the counterattack. No longer content to be the butt of jokes or the pride of the Thanksgiving table, Turkeys have crossed the concrete border into our suburbs and have taken the fight to our streets. Now these inveterately idiotic birds will be throwing their swollen weight at the backsides of soccer moms all over the exurbs. It seems the marauding gobblers have no decency, even considering the most vulnerable of the civilian population a viable target:

“…they’re afraid of the turkeys around their children. They don’t know what they’ll do.”

My advice? Yell really loud. Turkeys are actually stupid and tender enough to perish from fright at that. You can wipe out a whole empty-noggined mob with a good yell, as even the turkeys not floored by your bellow will drop dead from the horror of seeing their companions keeling over. Failing this, kick the bejeesus out of the bird. This too may frighten it.

More problematic is the invasion of Iraq by Turkey, which seems inevitable. Kurdish terrorists just yesterday grabbed eight Turkish soldiers, and shot up a whole unit the day before, killing twelve. This, after the Prime Minister, the parliament /and/ the military have all said they’re going to go. At this point, it really has become the military equivalent of “the Minnesota long goodbye” - that miasmal ten to sixty minute period of time between when Minnesotans rise to leave and when they actually part company, usually spent talking about the good time just had and the good times to come in the most pallid language.

Then again, if Iraq has shown us anything, it is that you can’t rush a quality invasion. Turkey is amassing no less than an Army Corps to put the big boot to the PKK pests. That takes no small amount of time to assemble, and is not likely to back down when it’s arrived.

And yet, then again, again, if this news week has shown us anything, it’s that the only thing you can truly expect is weirdness.