Jeff Fossett had never seen a turkey fly.
He hadn’t actually seen a turkey at all until he moved to Cambridge nearly a decade ago.
But when the postdoc researcher moved into a ground floor apartment on Ware St. in Mid-Cambridge, he was visited by turkeys at his window.
In the early morning, when he’d leave his apartment, they’d be on his street.
“They’d be like a neighbor,” he said. “You’d wave and say hi.”
The passing encounters deepened his curiosity. What did the turkeys do when he didn’t see them? Where did they sleep? And, did they actually fly? Fossett, who recently completed a Ph.D. studying technology governance, began following them.
The turkeys led him to Quincy St., where he saw them stroll up the ramp leading to the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. From there, they’d flutter to the lowest branch of a neighboring red maple tree. Then he watched as they flew, branch by branch, 40 feet above the ground to roost at the top.
Fossett has been documenting his discoveries about turkeys in an online project, which is now a web app called Turkeys in Public Space. It launched this spring and features a user-generated photo feed of local turkeys.
Although it began in the digital space, Fossett, who collaborates on the project with his friend Quinn Raymond, also has published an accompanying zine. The first edition has photos selected from the app, but the second edition, which Fossett is preparing, will have turkey illustrations, poems, facts and opportunities to interact.
“I want to do a hand turkey drawing competition,” he asserted.
New England turkey trot
After European settlers colonized land held by native tribes and developed it into New England in the 17th century, deforestation and hunting wiped out the local turkey population.
But turkeys made a comeback in the commonwealth in the 20th century after Massachusetts biologists followed other nearby states in capturing wild turkeys from places like New York and re-introduced them locally. What started as 37 wild turkeys in the 1970s now numbers between 30-35,000.
Despite common misconceptions, there isn’t a hunting ban on turkeys. Some 15,000 licensed hunters are allowed to hunt the birds during spring and fall hunting seasons, though it is functionally banned in Cambridge due to a variety of state regulations.
Everybody has a turkey story
The Turkeys In Public Space feed features several posts a week, though Fossett doesn’t know how many individual people use it because he doesn’t want the site to collect much information about its users.
But a month ago he hit a notable milestone: while he was taking a photo of a turkey, he overheard someone recommend his turkey site to someone else.
Besides putting his zines in Little Free Libraries and posting occasional fliers at local cafes, Fossett has done little to publicize his project. He finds it not only fun, but natural, that the tool is spreading via word of mouth.
Everyone, he says, has a story about turkeys.
For that reason, Turkeys In Public Space not only accepts photos, but also stories.
“I just find documentation really useful,” says Fossett, who says that as he wound down his Ph.D., he gravitated to “rebound projects.”
Before Turkeys in Public Space, he also worked on a collection of machine drawings of trees.
“We talk about natural things in big, collective terms like ‘the ocean’ or ‘the trees,’” he said. “But when you look up close, they’re so unique.”
People in Cambridge talk about “the turkeys” similarly. What would it mean if Cantabrigians began to recognize one from the other?
In cities beyond Boston, some animals have gained celebrity status when they became distinguishable. In Seattle this summer, the raccoon Jimothy became known for his round, tumbleweed shape. Before him, there was the Thai pygmy hippopotamus Moo Deng, who became an online star for her adorable tubbiness.
While a gang of turkeys in Falmouth gained notoriety for bullying mail carriers in Cape Cod, only one individual turkey seems to have reached such heights. In Reading, Mass., one turkey with a hobbled gait known as “Limpy” gained a following in 2019. Star status didn’t save him when a vehicle struck him in a hit-and-run crash on New Year’s Day, though he was carried to a school parking lot and hand-fed corn by fans until he died.
The vanguards
Although he is fascinated by turkeys, Fossett admits he is more interested in what they represent: the non-human side of Cambridge.
“The city is designed by people, for people, with intentions for cars and bikes,” he said. “Turkeys are an interesting [way] to see the city through a different perspective. How does this animal live here too? How do they make that work?”
While there are other non-human beings that we share space with, Fossett says turkeys are a “vanguard” of this category.
Local residents and tourists know the turkeys here are bold, sometimes even aggressive. They present themselves in ways that other members of the natural world may not.
“They’re willing to stand in the middle of the road and just hold their space,” said Fossett.
More so than other native species, turkeys help Cantabrigians ask, “How do we share space?”
They’re also just part of the “fun, unique texture” of this particular place, says Fossett.
“If it was ‘worms in public space,’ it might be harder to get people interested.”
A stronger
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