Please excuse my absence for this past week. I was in Miami, the subject of some posts yet to come!

In the meantime, a very happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it. Feeling much gratitude. I hope you are too!

All About Turkeys

In honor of Thanksgiving, the subject for the day is—TURKEYS!

 A whole bunch of questions came to mind when I thought about researching and writing about turkeys (The power is often in the question!).

• Is the turkey native only to the United States?

• What habits and features are unique to a turkey?

• When did Thanksgiving became a national holiday?

•  Is it true that turkey was served at the pilgrim dinner?

• Is it true that Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey our national bird?

Here are the answers to these questions. I found it fascinating and sometimes surprising.

Is the turkey native only to the United States?

 Yes, pretty close! The turkey (Meleagris) is native only to North America. 

There are two surviving turkey species today: the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) of eastern and central North America and the Near Threatened ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata) of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. 

The ocellated turkey is rather stunning compared to its northern brethren. The feathers on the male are a mixture of bronze and green iridescent turquoise. They both have those crazy facial features (stay tuned for the scoop on that!)

There were more types of wild turkeys in the past. We know this because their strong bones fossilized well. In the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, scientists found many bones of the now extinct California turkey, Meleagris californica. The California variety used to be abundant and was around for a long time, dating back 11 million years. Evidence suggests it went extinct about 12,000 years ago either due to climate change as the glaciers shrank, or overhunting by Native Americans, or both.

The Wild Turkey exists in all 48 contiguous states and small portions of Mexico and Canada. But this bird, the origin of our domesticated turkeys, almost went extinct in the 1930s, when it had been eradicated from 18 states and was found only in areas that were essentially inaccessible to hunters. The population had been reduced to only two percent of its original—from 10 million to 200,000. Yikes! The return to 6,500,000 turkeys today illustrates a successful wildlife management program. We have wild turkeys in our neighborhood. Sometimes, a small rafter of them will walk slowly across the road glaring at your waiting car. I like having them around.

Domesticated turkeys—the kind we eat—are the same species as wild turkeys but have been bred to have different characteristics than their wild kin. The feathers on an eating bird are white, an intentional change, since white pin feathers are less noticeable on the carcass. While wild turkeys have acute eyesight and the ability to move at speeds of 55 mph while in flight. Domestic birds are slow, fairly farsighted, and haven’t got forest smarts, for obvious reasons. You often hear the phrase, “dumb as a turkey.” That’s referring to the domesticated bird and not the wild one. It’s illegal to release pen-raised turkeys into the wild. They could introduce disease and could contaminate the wild turkey gene pool.

What habits and features are unique to a turkey?

The Latin species name gallopāvō means "chicken peacock,” and male turkeys, like peacocks, can look quite handsome when they strut, but they’ve got a face that only a mother and another turkey could love! All species of turkeys have the same funky features around the head and neck. They have great names like the caruncles, the snood, the wattle, the dewlap, and the beard.

The snood is an erectile, fleshy protuberance on the forehead of turkeys extending over their beaks. When male turkeys strut to get a mate, the snood becomes redder, engorging with blood, and elongates several centimeters. Its size depends on the turkey's sex life, health, and mood. It would be a compliment to call a turkey snoody (snooty).

The snood is one of several caruncles, the categorical name for all the small, fleshy excrescences on a turkey’s face and neck. And they are particularly bumpy!

The wattle is that long, hanging caruncle that flops around on a turkey’s neck. Evidently, female turkeys are turned on by a walloping wattle. On a turkey, since there is generally only one wattle (roosters have two), it is also known as a dewlap. Where my imagination goes with that is picturing a line of strutting male turkeys singing doo-wop—or, in their case, dewlap.

A Wild Turkey's beard is a tuft that looks a bit like a miniature horsetail dangling from its breast. A little different than that of retired SF Giants’ pitcher Brian Wilson’s! It is a cluster of stiff filaments that look hair-like but are actually feather-like structures called mesofiloplumes. Year-old males have beards up to about five inches long, while toms three or more years old can have beards that are ten inches or longer. It’s not clear if turkey beards have a purpose, but they are important to scientists in understanding how feathers evolved from dinosaur skin and scales.

Here are some fun facts about turkey behavior:

Turkeys can fly, but not far. They usually fly from tree to tree or from the ground to perch on a limb. Since they can move up to 55 MPH, wild turkeys generally move a mile or two in one day.

Just like humans, turkeys talk to communicate. Their vocabulary, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation, consists of 28 distinct calls. Each sound has a general meaning and can be used for different situations. Male turkeys are notorious for their iconic gobble, which unlike other calls, is given with a fixed intensity. (Gobble is one of my favorite onomatopoeias!) Check out the turkey sounds!

Turkeys roost in trees to avoid ground predators.

Turkeys like dust baths and generally take them as a flock. It keeps their feathers from becoming greasy or matted. They find a good patch of dusty dirt, flap frantically to spread dust over their entire bodies, then they suntan and preen. Sunning regulates their body temperatures, dislodges feather parasites and relaxes them. It’s like a turkey spa.

When did Thanksgiving became a national holiday?

In the US, pretty much everybody knows that our contemporary Thanksgiving holiday is based loosely off a harvest festival shared by 53 pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Native Americans at Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, in 1621. We all made those hand turkey crafts in elementary school, our thumb becoming the head of the turkey, and sometimes pilgrim hats, right?

It was said that the festival was held in gratitude for the bounty of the season. (I love the gratitude part of this holiday!)

But like most origin stories, the evolution of our current overeating fest is complex.

The accounts of that first Thanksgiving are sketchy at best. The best account is in a letter from English settler Edward Winslow that never mentions the word “Thanksgiving,” but tells of a weeklong harvest celebration that included a three-day celebration with King Massasoit and 90 Wampanoag men “so we might after a more special manner rejoice together.”

Florida has a 16th century Thanksgiving pre-dating the national one, believe it or not. In 1565, nearly 60 years before Plymouth, a Spanish fleet came ashore and planted a cross in the sandy beach to christen the new settlement of St. Augustine. To celebrate the arrival and give thanks for God’s providence, the 800 Spanish settlers shared a festive meal with the native Timucuan people. Who knew?!

Thanksgiving (based on the Plymouth legend) became an annual custom throughout New England in the 17th century for a lot of folks, but not all, and it wasn’t official until in 1777 when the Continental Congress declared the first national American Thanksgiving following the Patriot victory at Saratoga. It was a turning point in the war. December 18 was a national day "for solemn Thanksgiving and praise"; it was the nation's first official observance of a holiday with that name.

President George Washington declared another Thanksgiving, again having nothing to do with pilgrims. In 1789, Washington became the first president to proclaim a Thanksgiving holiday, when, at the request of Congress, he proclaimed November 26, a Thursday, as a day of national thanksgiving to recognize the role of providence in creating the new United States and the new federal Constitution.

It was President Abraham Lincoln that declared Thanksgiving—based on the Plymouth festival—a national celebration in 1863. A woman named Sarah Josepha Hale convinced him that a nationally celebrated Thanksgiving holiday would unite the country in the aftermath of the Civil War. Sarah was a writer, activist, and an influential editor. Among other works, she wrote the nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb.

After that, folks celebrated Thanksgiving annually on or around the last Thursday in November, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke with tradition in 1939, declaring November 23, the next to last Thursday that year, as Thanksgiving Day. Some people were pissed off and refused to honor Roosevelt’s declaration. For the next two years, Roosevelt repeated the unpopular proclamation. Until November 26, 1941, when he admitted his mistake and signed a bill into law officially making the fourth Thursday in November the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day.

 Is it true that turkey was served at the pilgrim dinner?

Probably not!

What?!

According to research by Catherine Lamb, a writer for Food52 (and confirmed elsewhere), there are only two surviving documents that reference the original Thanksgiving harvest meal. They describe a feast of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, a bounty of cod and bass, and flint, a native variety of corn harvested by the Native Americans, which was eaten as corn bread and porridge.

That wildfowl could’ve been turkey but was more likely duck or goose. 

Other foods NOT served were: 

Mashed potatoes—White potatoes had not yet crossed over from South America.

Gravy—Colonists didn’t yet have mills to produce flour.

Sweet Potatoes—Tuberous roots had not yet been introduced from the Caribbean.

Pumpkin pie—There was no sugar to make pie, however, pumpkins might’ve been around.

Natives Americans loved their cranberries though, both as a food staple and to create red dye. They weren’t sweeted though!

Is it true that Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey our national bird?

NO, it’s a myth.

If you’ve never heard the story, here’s the gist of it:

Popular lore suggests Franklin wanted the wild turkey rather than the bald eagle—both animals native to North America—to be named the national bird of the United States. (Smithsonianmag.com)

I became acquainted with this story when I was ten years old at my first (and very memorable) introduction to musical theatre, a production of 1776. In the song “The Egg,” Jefferson, Adams and Franklin argue whether the national bird should be the eagle (Adams), the dove (Jefferson) or the turkey (Franklin). I was absolutely tickled by the idea.

But the Franklin Institute (a Philadelphia-based science museum and education center), says the story is a myth. 

According to the Institute’s research, Franklin simply criticized the Great Seal’s original eagle design for too closely resembling a turkey, which he called “a much more respectable Bird...a little vain & silly, [but] a Bird of Courage.”

I’ll answer these questions in tomorrow’s post:

How many turkeys are sold for Thanksgiving? Versus the rest of the year?

When was the first turkey pardoned by a US president?

What is the origin of the term “turkey” as a derogatory label?

Why is turkey the preferred meet of sandwiches?

Can a turkey ever be tamed?