Let's talk Turkey!

This commercial cracks me up every time it's on. It reminds me of when we raised turkeys growing up. We started off raising the Broadbreasted Bronze breed of turkey. Most of the ones we butchered to eat were so big they couldn't fit in the oven. We later went to raising the 'Royal Palm' breed of turkey because they're smaller in size and have white feathers which are better if you're going to be plucking the bird since the white pin feathers don't show up like the black ones on the Bronze turkey after they're plucked.

My first batch of turkey poults only had four in the bunch ~ two males, two females. I named them Larry, Darrell, Darrell and well ... Darrell. Lack of creativity in the name choosing department you ask? No, they were named after some characters on the old Bob Newhart show. Remember? 'Hi, My name is Larry, this is my brother Darrell and this is my other brother Darrell. ' So I had three Darrells but I knew one would be used for Thanksgiving dinner that year and didn't want to waste brain cells coming up with a name for a 'non - pet'.

The other three turkeys lived for several years. I took them to the county and state fairs and won lots of awards. I used my favorite one - Larry - for all of my public speaking 4 -H demonstrations. You can get boxed in the face by wings quite easily when lifting a huge male turkey. Usually, I'd hold the wings down and my dad would lift him onto a table for my demos. I have a wonderful photo of myself with Larry and one of the grand champion ribbons he won but I can't seem to find it right now. I'm sure it'll resurface as soon as Thanksgiving is over and I no longer want to talk about turkey.

One day, one of the Darrell's ( a female ) went missing. They were all able to fly over the turkey pen fence to get out when they wanted and this one female would follow me around while I did my chores. We assumed coyotes had gotten her during the night.

Several weeks later - I mean, several, we were outside working in the yard and way out back on an old dirt logging road that used to cut through our property, we see this large bird slowly walking towards the house, pecking at grass and bugs as she came. It was Darrell! We noticed she had a huge wound about the size of a cantaloupe on her side. It was dry and had started to scab over. We figured she'd been wounded by another animal, hid down the road in the bushes and ate bugs while she waited to heal. Then made her way home. She went on to follow me around like a dog while I did my chores each day. Both she and Larry loved the camera. Every time we brought a camera out they'd strut in front of it - back and forth - even if you were trying to photograph something else.

Where did the turkey get it's name?: A case of mistaken identity resulted in the American Turkey being named after the country. When the Spanish first found the bird in the Americas more than 400 years ago they brought it back to Europe. The English mistakenly thought it was a bird they called a "turkey" so they gave it the same name. This other bird was actually from Africa, but came to England by way of the Turkey ( lots of shipping went through Turkey at the time). The name stuck even when they realized the birds weren't the same.