Every year, the President of the United States ceremoniously "pardons" a turkey, which then lives out the rest of its (usually short) life on a farm rather than being slaughtered for that year's Thanksgiving dinner. President Obama has noted the ridiculousness of the custom, and it's been noted on multiple occasions that one can hardly "pardon" a bird that has not committed any crime that needs pardoning.

If anyone needs to seek a turkey guilty of a crime, might I suggest the wild turkeys in Livermore, whose vandalism in the Fertile Groundworks garden was a constant bother in its early seasons? Those vegetables were intended for the local soup kitchen! We weren't allowed to hunt the turkeys and add them to the free dinners, so we had to call animal control to set elaborate traps for them.

Or perhaps the turkey I saw standing in the middle of Fremont Boulevard, obstructing traffic without a care in the world because it had learned that humans were unwilling to run it over.

Those turkeys were troublemakers, for sure. But those crimes don't merit capital punishment, so I wish them a safe Thanksgiving. Good luck out there, turkeys.