Turkey stories are traditional lore - Yahoo News

The president issues an annual proclamation for a day of Thanksgiving. Also, each year since 1947, a live turkey has been presented to the president.

Since 1963, when President Kennedy decided to let his bird live, the turkey has been spared the chopping block. Prior to 1963, most of the presidents ate their turkeys as was intended. Some believe President Truman also spared his turkey in 1947, but this is not documented.

The first Thanksgiving celebrations included wild turkeys, which were tough, able to fly and hard to catch. Nowadays, it’s a good thing that turkeys come from the store already slaughtered, plucked and dressed, or there would not be a Thanksgiving fowl roasting in most ovens. My sister once roasted a wild turkey bagged by my brother, but as I recall, no one liked it.

Even though the domesticated birds are available from the supermarkets, the difficulty comes with the fewer birds, much higher prices, and for myself, the heavy weight when carrying and preparing them for the family table.

We didn't raise turkeys when I was growing up on the farm, but I remember the year we had a live one to prepare. That year Mom bought a gobbler from her aunt, and although she often dispatched chickens with her ax and chopping block, she found that the bird still retained some of the survival qualities of his ancestors. Mom was able to win that skirmish, but she never tried it again.

I had always loved the stories of my Grandma Mundy raising turkeys and geese and selling them in the fall to outfit her children for school. Dad said that because catching the large birds was difficult, herding them was easier. They were shooed up a ramp into the bed of a farm wagon that had been prepared with slats nailed across the top to cage them. Then they were hauled in the horse-drawn wagon and sold at Shoals, bringing a pretty good price considering the economy of those days.

It was years later, in the early 1960s, that I actually raised a couple of the fowls myself. My turkey-raising venture came about by accident. Dad happened to be in Huron when a turkey truck wrecked on the highway. The surviving fowls were chased down by some local folks, and Dad was given a pair of the half-grown birds. He brought them home, and I offered to take care of them.

I knew very little about raising turkeys besides the bits I remembered that my grandma had told me. She had said that they were fragile and needed a lot of care, but I thought It could not be much trouble to take care of two half-grown turkeys. We had always kept chickens, and I had even raised my own chicks as a 4H project.

I was confident that the poults would be healthy and happy if they were allowed to forage on grass and chase bugs, so I turned them loose in the yard with plenty of feed and water. However, my idea of easily managed free-range birds was soon squelched when the overly-friendly critters chose the front porch as their favorite spot. They spent their days there, eating Mom's petunias and contributing their personal "decorations."

My alternate strategy was to improvise a small pen and shelter for them, In my enthusiasm for old family traditions, I had all but forgotten another part of Grandma's story. She had said that turkeys were so dumb that they would stand out in the rain and drown if left on their own.

I soon found that they really were stupid enough to drown in a the rain. Grandma's words came back to me each time I got wet and dirty catching the flapping and kicking birds and shoving them into the shelter. Turkeys apparently had all the survival instincts bred out of them when they were domesticated.

Over that summer, I developed a bit of of affection for the two pesky birds. They were so dumb that I felt sorry for them, and when they were eventually slaughtered (by my father this time), I was purposely absent, and I really couldn't bring myself to eat them.

I suppose if I were presented with a large live turkey, as the president is each year, I would likely pardon it as he does. Turns out, however, that this stay of execution does little good for the huge turkeys. The birds are said to be bred for eating; not for living, and those fast-growing, over-developed fat fowls that we feast upon will usually not survive more than a few weeks past their prime.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Mail: Turkey stories are traditional lore

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