Bird Watching

“Anyway, he was sitting at the bar at the LongHorn Steakhouse in Williston one night a couple months back, sipping his Long Island iced tea and brainstorming ways to stick it to the town, when he got to thinking out loud: ‘Too bad I can’t go buy a big [F-bomb] middle finger and put it on a post out there.’ His wife, Michelle — who over the years has grown used to hearing his outlandish ideas — replied: ‘Cut it out.’ But Michelle Pelkey also knows her husband. And so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when, soon after, he commissioned a local sculptor — at a cost of $3,000 — to create, from a 7-foot-tall, 600-plus-pound chunk of pine, a single-finger salute.” Boston: In Vermont, a small-town feud leads to a big middle finger.