Why did the turkey cross the road?

Clearly, he or she wanted to check out the new striping on Central Street, which has just about everybody confounded.

He also might have questioned why the striping was done before any repaving, but that question is better left to higher minds than his. Such as mine.

However, I enjoyed seeing him early of a morn, the sun just peeking up over the evergreens and the shimmer of water in the distance. It's my kind of weather, cool, dry and of course, sunny, so I've been packing a lot of vim and vigor into my day, as I told my pal Lucy's parents.

What's vim? you ask. Well, Lucy's folks conveniently have a large dictionary on a pedestal, so you can just look up words whenever you like. Vim: energy; enthusiasm, of which I have more than enough.

So to contain some of same, Mom tried the Easy Walk harness on me. Or, I should say, retried; perhaps she forgot that the problem with the harness was not that it had problems containing me but rather that it should more properly be called the Easy Balk harness.

For that is what I did, dear reader.

Stood there, simply stood there, until she was out of her mind. I knew she was out of treats, so guess who won this round of patience? When I want, I can be very, very patient. Very, very patient.

Fortunately for Mom, the mail carrier didn't know that we were engaged in this secret war, and he pulled off the road to greet me. Bored as I was, it was a relief. Plus, I nabbed a few more calories, just in case I did walk off —or, should I say, balk off— a few during my outing.