​“The Harvard Turkey” is a small local celebrity around campus. Most people on campus have a few stories about “the” turkey. I wanted to find out a bit more about this wild animal that had taken on an entirely non-turkey-like identity and inspired lore among the community. Was there indeed a singular Harvard turkey? What did this turkey do all day? Where did this turkey sleep? The obvious struggle here was to track the turkey, so I sent out an email in the morning to the Dunster open list asking people to contact the list if they encountered a turkey throughout the day and provide a location and photo. I gave the subject line the title “#Turkeywatch.”

​By around 1pm I’d received over 30 emails on the thread (by Friday I’d receive over double this) and multiple turkey sightings. At this point I was done with classes for the day and was able to follow the turkey myself. Albeit in a rough fashion, my maps, photos, and videos document the turkey’s life from approximate 1pm to 7pm on Wednesday, October 1st. And the crowd-sourced photos show its activities from approximate 9am to 12pm. There are also a few crowd-sourced photos included that show snapshots of the turkey’s life on Thursday and Friday.

​From following the turkey, I learned a great deal about its life of traveling from seeded lawn to seeded lawn. One person informed me that it eats the mulberries on his lawn almost every day. Another mentioned that until recently she had always seen two together, but now had only been seeing the one. So it very well may be “the” Harvard turkey, because it appears that, at least at the moment, it is the only turkey around, as there were never two turkey sightings at once. This is odd, as Turkeys most commonly live in groups (and certainly not in Urban areas). After tracking it through backyards I watched it fly into a tree and go to sleep on Athens street (which I had been told was a common turkey-spotting location).

This Turkey’s presence is massive in the Harvard and Cambridge community, and it has a really powerful position when walking the streets. People move aside for it, cars stop, employees crowd at the windows to watch it. It has a personality so much larger than a mere wild animal. This is what makes it a real figure among humans in the area, and pushes it outside the boundaries of a simple animal and closer to those of a person.