GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS:

This article from Atlas Obscura takes a look back at "turkey drives" when that was the only way, before refrigerated transport, to get one's flock to market. "When we think back on livestock migrations, we typically think of cattle, maybe sheep. The image of a rugged herdsman driving a clucking, head-bobbing, beady-eyed gaggle of birds across open plains and down dirt roads is harder to imagine, yet this practice used to be common all over the world. ... Such drives were no trivial matter, either: Birds by the thousands were sometimes driven hundreds of miles over several days; foxes and other predators would thin the herd along the way. In some parts of the world, such drives lasted into the 1930s. ... Turkey drives could include 'shooers' who herded the turkeys, children who scattered feed in the path to guide the birds, and covered wagons filled with grain to feed them. ... 'Wherever they are when the sun sets, that’s where they perch for the night,' Peter Gilbert, chair of the Vermont Humanities Council told Vermont Public Radio. 'And their collective weight shatters trees; occasionally birds end up perching on a farmer’s shed or barn and the building collapses. In fact, in one town, they roosted on top of the school building and the school collapsed.' Sometimes the turkeys would mistake the shade cast by a covered bridge for nighttime and react accordingly, requiring their drivers to roust them from the structure." Be sure to check out the photos in the article: www.atlasobscura.com/articles/back-when-your-thanksgiving-dinner-walked-hundreds-of-miles-to-market