Another Business School Turkey

There is a turkey at Harvard Business School. We don’t mean famous Harvard B-School alums like financial geniuses George W. Bush and Henry M. Paulson, Jr. This is a new turkey, a gal named Turk Turkee, an actual wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). It roams the B-School campus at will, chasing tuition-paying students, Monetarists and Keynesians alike.

David Abel of the Boston Globe reports that Ms. Turkee chases bikes, attacks reporters, digs holes in the lush lawns, and scratches cars with her beak. The big bird likes to nap in the dean’s garden. There are no reports that she is auditing classes. The Globe has a turkey video.

Initially treated as a B-School mascot, Turk Turkee is now regarded as a renegade, an agressive campus pest, but it is illegal to remove or relocate wildlife in Massachusetts. Wild turkeys were almost extinct in the Bay State until thirty years ago, when the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife reintroduced them. There are now about 23,000 turkeys hopping, pecking, and gobbling around the Bay State, and there are hunting seasons in wildlife management areas. But turkeys are starting to colonize the suburbs, city parks — and the HBS campus.

Perhaps Turk Turkee will inspire some MBA student to solve the nation’s widespread problem of suburban deer, backyard bears, and campus turkeys. We have our own solution to the latter nuisance: Thanksgiving Dinner.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.