THEMELESS MONDAY: [ ACROSS LITE][ PDF]
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It’s been a while since I shared a picture of a selfie with me and the rafters of turkeys that are taking over my neighborhood. So, here ya go. This one … man, this one’s feisty. One of my neighbors fed the thing! Fed the turkey, so now this bird thinks it runs the block. It just shows up and expects to be fed now. And it knows it’s the alpha bird here, the way it struts around the back of my house, shaking its wattle, puffing out its feathers. It’s fearless, let me tell you. I wasn’t fast enough to catch a photo of it snooping around the trunk of my car. I was too dumbstruck to think to snap a photo. But, anyway, there’s the scoundrel. Somebody eat it for Thanksgiving, will ya?
Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.
Unless 50A refers to something other than the Iliad of Homer, the clue should be something like “Stars of the Aeneid.”
Usually I skim the verbal part of your blog and go straight to the puzzle because contemporary music, sports, etc… but today’s was perfection. I HATE those damn birds. They are disgusting (ever get close enough to smell one?) and dangerous. They once blocked me from my doctor’s office door, then they finally crossed the street and blended in with a bunch of little kids walking to school. They didn’t really blend because they were taller than the kids. There’s a woman in her eighties in my aqua aerobics class at the High School who comes late because they block her front and back doors so she can’t leave the house. I’ve got a million stories about traffic accidents they’ve caused, including a couple of near misses of my own. I went to the police station once and was told that they are “protected”. One of the officers wound up in the hospital and then on disability leave because a turkey attacked him from the back. He had a gun on him but couldn’t use it because they are “protected”. I asked whether he could have used it if a human had come up behind him and hit him that hard. Answer: of course.
I have gone further and asked dozens of state reps and senators exactly what law “protects” these monsters and no one knows. Even sent a letter to Rep. Kennedy when he was living across the street from me. No reply. Maybe he couldn’t get to the Post Office through the rafter of birds.
This has to stop! BEQ, let’s gather all your followers who live in this town and start a rebellion. Until the monster birds pay as much in property taxes as we do, stop protecting them and start protecting humans. I would never intrude on anybody’s blog with a political agenda, but this is a plague of biblical proportions. You are an influencer, so influence…
“Astra” comes from Greek not Latin. In Latin stars is “stellae”. So the clue is correct.
…cougars coexist nicely with humans in urban and suburban areas. The key is available diet… maybe just wait. Of course, some are threatened by cougars…
my first guess fill for 1A was Trumpsbrain
Too many rap references … anti trump clues …. bugger off
Long time listener, first time caller.
My brother lives in Swampscott, where there is a similar turkey infestation problem. He said they’re so stridently IDGAF they might as well be wearing leather jackets and giving nerds noogies. I say they might not make a great Thanksgiving eating bird, but they might make a nice centerpiece.
See you at XWord Tourney in 2020!
Well, no. While it is true that stella means star in Latin, the more common Latin word for star is astrum, the plural of which is astra. The (nominative) plural of Greek astHr (H=eta) is astHres. See, e.g, the title of the current movie “Ad Astra” (with Latin “ad,” not Greek “pros”) and the state motto of Kansas.
Astra, while used in Latin mottoes, was borrowed from Ancient Greek. See: Astra Planeta, the gods of the 5 wandering stars.
Let’s keep picking those nits, shall we? 😉