Turkey Bird Quotes

I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner.

This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values....

I’m addicted to warm Thanksgiving bird meat, but I should just quit cold turkey. To me, the beginning of December is like leftover November.

Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race “looking out for its best interests,” as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.*

He snaps a shot of Cornbread and presses send, flinching when the bird flaps at him threateningly. I think he’s cute, Henry responds. that’s because you can’t hear all the menacing gobbling Yes, famously the most sinister of all animal sounds, the gobble. “You know what, you little shit,” Alex says the second the call connects, “you can hear it for yourself and then tell me how you would handle this—” “Alex?” Henry’s voice sounds scratchy and bewildered across the line. “Have you really rung me at three o’clock in the morning to make me listen to a turkey?” “Yes, obviously,” Alex says. He glances at Cornbread and cringes. “Jesus Christ, it’s like they can see into your soul. Cornbread knows my sins, Henry. Cornbread knows what I have done, and he is here to make me atone.

[in reference to turkey bowling] He [Tommy] squinted and picked his target, then took his steps and sent the bird sliding down the aisle. A collective gasp rose from the crew as the fourteen-pound, self-basting, fresh-frozen projectile of wholesome savory goodness plowed into the soap bottles like a freight train into a chorus line of drunken grandmothers.

Michael Pollan likens consumer choices to pulling single threads out of a garment. We pull a thread from the garment when we refuse to purchase eggs or meat from birds who were raised in confinement, whose beaks were clipped so they could never once taste their natural diet of worms and insects. We pull out a thread when we refuse to bring home a hormone-fattened turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. We pull a thread when we refuse to buy meat or dairy products from cows who were never allowed to chew grass, or breathe fresh air, or feel the warm sun on their backs. The more threads we pull, the more difficult it is for the industry to stay intact. You demand eggs and meat without hormones, and the industry will have to figure out how it can raise farm animals without them. Let the animals graze outside and it slows production. Eventually the whole thing will have to unravel. If the factory farm does indeed unravel - and it must - then there is hope that we can, gradually, reverse the environmental damage it has caused. Once the animal feed operations have gone and livestock are once again able to graze, there will be a massive reduction in the agricultural chemicals currently used to grow grain for animals. And eventually, the horrendous contamination caused by animal waste can be cleaned up. None of this will be easy. The hardest part of returning to a truly healthy environment may be changing the current totally unsustainable heavy-meat-eating culture of increasing numbers of people around the world. But we must try. We must make a start, one by one.

It has thrown off its disguise as a meal and has revealed itself to me for what it is, a large dead bird. I'm eating a wing. It's the wing of a tame turkey, the stupidest bird in the world, so stupid it can't even fly any more. I am eating lost flight.

Instead, he is in a prison of his own creation, sworn to babysit these turkeys until the pardoning ceremony, and is just now realizing his deep-seated fear of large birds.

Did y’all arrest Uncle Bob’s turkey? It was just criminal what he did to that bird, wasn’t it? You

Scientific studies and government records suggest that virtually all (upwards of 95 percent of) chickens become infected with E. coli (an indicator of fecal contamination) and between 39 and 75 percent of chickens in retail stores are still infected. Around 8 percent of birds become infected with salmonella (down from several years ago, when at least one in four birds was infected, which still occurs on some farms). Seventy to 90 percent are infected with another potentially deadly pathogen, campylobacter. Chlorine baths are commonly used to remove slime, odor, and bacteria. Of course, consumers might notice that their chickens don't taste quite right - how good could a drug-stuffed, disease-ridden, shit-contaminated animal possibly taste? - but the birds will be injected (or otherwise pumped up) with "broths" and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken look, smell, and taste. (A recent study by Consumer Reports found that chicken and turkey products, many labeled as natural, "ballooned with 10 to 30 percent of their weight as broth, flavoring, or water.

Think of the beginning of the story of the beginning of everything: Adam (without Eve and without divine guidance) names the animals. Continuing his work, we call stupid people bird-brained, cowardly people chickens, fools turkeys. Are these the best names we have to offer? If we can revise the notion of women coming from a rib, can’t we revise our categorizations of the animals that, draped with barbecue sauce, end up as the ribs on our dinner plates — or for that matter, the KFC in our hands?

I'm eating a wing. It's the wing of a tame turkey, the stupidest bird in the world. So stupid it can't even fly anymore. I am eating lost flight.

For the record, even a turkey vulture won’t eat a processed chicken nugget. I stopped buying them for my son when I saw the vultures picking around them.

Turkeys can run with eagles but cannot fly with them.

Madelaine: I guess it's up to you to carve the turkey. Angel: Come on, bro, show me how to carve up this bird. Francis: Start at the breast, Angel. God knows, you should know how to do that.

Ultimately, the roast turkey must be regarded as a monument to Boomer's love. Look at it now, plump and glossy, floating across Idaho as if it were a mammoth, mutated seed pod. Hear how it backfires as it passes the silver mines, perhaps in tribute to the origin of the knives and forks of splendid sterling that a roast turkey and a roast turkey alone possesses the charisma to draw forth into festivity from dark cupboards. See how it glides through the potato fields, familiarly at home among potatoes but with an air of expectation, as if waiting for the flood of gravy. The roast turkey carries with it, in its chubby hold, a sizable portion of our primitive and pagan luggage. Primitive and pagan? Us? We of the laser, we of the microchip, we of the Union Theological Seminary and Time magazine? Of course. At least twice a year, do not millions upon millions of us cybernetic Christians and fax machine Jews participate in a ritual, a highly stylized ceremony that takes place around a large dead bird? And is not this animal sacrificed, as in days of yore, to catch the attention of a divine spirit, to show gratitude for blessings bestowed, and to petition for blessings coveted? The turkey, slain, slowly cooked over our gas or electric fires, is the central figure at our holy feast. It is the totem animal that brings our tribe together. And because it is an awkward, intractable creature, the serving of it establishes and reinforces the tribal hierarchy. There are but two legs, two wings, a certain amount of white meat, a given quantity of dark. Who gets which piece; who, in fact, slices the bird and distributes its limbs and organs, underscores quite emphatically the rank of each member in the gathering. Consider that the legs of this bird are called 'drumsticks,' after the ritual objects employed to extract the music from the most aboriginal and sacred of instruments. Our ancestors, kept their drums in public, but the sticks, being more actively magical, usually were stored in places known only to the shaman, the medicine man, the high priest, of the Wise Old Woman. The wing of the fowl gives symbolic flight to the soul, but with the drumstick is evoked the best of the pulse of the heart of the universe. Few of us nowadays participate in the actual hunting and killing of the turkey, but almost all of us watch, frequently with deep emotion, the reenactment of those events. We watch it on TV sets immediately before the communal meal. For what are footballs if not metaphorical turkeys, flying up and down a meadow? And what is a touchdown if not a kill, achieved by one or the other of two opposing tribes? To our applause, great young hungers from Alabama or Notre Dame slay the bird. Then, the Wise Old Woman, in the guise of Grandma, calls us to the table, where we, pretending to be no longer primitive, systematically rip the bird asunder. Was Boomer Petaway aware of the totemic implications when, to impress his beloved, he fabricated an outsize Thanksgiving centerpiece? No, not consciously. If and when the last veil dropped, he might comprehend what he had wrought. For the present, however, he was as ignorant as Can o' Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock were, before Painted Stick and Conch Shell drew their attention to similar affairs. Nevertheless, it was Boomer who piloted the gobble-stilled butterball across Idaho, who negotiated it through the natural carving knives of the Sawtooth Mountains, who once or twice parked it in wilderness rest stops, causing adjacent flora to assume the appearance of parsley.

They had scraped up fresh river fish, and stewed them with white wine and aubergines; also a rare local bird which combined the tender flavour of partridge with the solid bulk of the turkey; they had roasted it and stuffed it with bananas, almonds, and red peppers; also a baby gazelle which they had seethed with truffles in its mother's milk; also a dish of feathery Arab pastry and a heap of unusual fruits. Mr Baldwin sighed wistfully. "Well," he said, "I suppose it will not hurt us to rough it for once.

We left the Bentley and Tim at a garage, and Alan and I travelled back to Brussels to hire a much less magnificent vehicle. When we picked Tim up the next morning, he told us that he’d spent the night in his room with a ‘bird’. Intrigued, we questioned him closely, and learned that he had been woken in the middle of the night by a strange, rather alarming noise and that when he had put the light on he had discovered a turkey vomiting on the mantelpiece. He’d thought of complaining but found that his phrase book did not cover this contingency.

Few things are more beautiful than a giant, deep golden brown featherless bird in the middle of a dinner table (unless that bird is turkey, which we can all surely agree sucks and yet once a year we all come together and lie to ourselves and each other for some wild reason).

They agreed they neither gave two hoots now as to how marriages were normally conducted. They would do as they pleased and run their lives by the roll of the seasons. In autumn the apple trees would be bright and heavy with apples and they would hunt birds together, since Ada had proved so successful with the turkeys. They would not hunt with the gaudy Italian piece of Monroe's but with fine simple shotguns they would order from England. In summer they would catch trout with tackle from the same sporting country. They would grow old together measuring time by the life spans of a succession of speckled bird dogs. At some point, well past midlife, they might take up painting and get little tin fieldboxes of watercolors, likewise from England. Go on country walks, and when they saw a scene that pleased them, stop and dip cups of water from a creek and form the lines and tints on paper for future reference.

Pound for pound, these animals don’t add up to much. Dog fanciers with a couple of Rottweilers trump us in terms of sheer biomass. But, when it comes to sheer insistence, even the largest, most unruly dogs—or for that matter, your average herd of cattle—are no match for our ducks, geese, parrots, parakeets, turkeys, cats, rabbits, and other birds.

Benjamin Franklin felt that it was wrong that the bald eagle was chosen as the emblem for our nation. He said the bald eagle had bad moral character because he did not get his living honestly… too lazy to fish for himself… Benjamin Franklin said this, that the bald eagle stole from the fish hawk and that the turkey was a more respectable bird and a true native of America.

Just as the online mystics suggest, I have been makkng offerings to vultures in thanks for their guidance. The freezer, for me, is the place where good food goes to die, it lies in state, with occassional viewings, until a major power outage thaws it and gives me permission to toss it out to the middle of the field, where Turkey vultures have a field day sampling sausages, steaks, roasts, chicken thighs, and breaded nuggets. For the record,even a turkey vulture won't eat a chicken nugget. I stopped buying them when I saw the vultures picking around them.

So don’t misunderstand me, it isn’t that I think the Old Greeks are worse than the Turks, what irritates me is that they think they’re so much better when really they’re exactly the same. God made them Cain and Abel, and whichever one happens to have the upper hand takes his turn as Cain. Whoever is unfortunate enough to be playing the role of Abel seizes the opportunity to bemoan the barbarism of the other. If I ever get to meet God In Person I shall suggest quite forcefully that He impartially abolish their religions, and then they will be friends for ever.

Ducking beneath the low-hanging limbs of giant trees, she churned slowly through thicket for more than a hundred yards, as easy turtles slid from water-logs. A floating mat of duckweed colored the water as green as the leafy ceiling, creating an emerald tunnel. Finally, the trees parted, and she glided into a place of wide sky and reaching grasses, and the sounds of cawing birds. The view a chick gets, she reckoned, when it finally breaks its shell. Kya tooled along, a tiny speck of a girl in a boat, turning this way and that as endless estuaries branched and braided before her. Keep left at all the turns going out, Jodie had said. She barely touched the throttle, easing the boat through the current, keeping the noise low. As she broke around a stand of reeds, a whitetail doe with last spring's fawn stood lapping water. Their heads jerked up, slinging droplets through the air. Kya didn't stop or they would bolt, a lesson she'd learned from watching wild turkeys: if you act like a predator, they act like prey. Just ignore them, keep going slow. She drifted by, and the deer stood as still as a pine until Kya disappeared beyond the salt grass.

So not only couldn’t their Thanksgiving turkeys fly when they were alive, they couldn’t walk, either. As a child, Citra always felt bad for them, even though the Thunderhead took great pains to make sure such birds—and all livestock—were raised humanely. Citra had seen a video on it in third grade. The turkeys, from the moment of their hatching, were suspended in a warm gel, and their small brains were wet-wired into a computer that produced for them an artificial reality in which they experienced flight, freedom, reproduction, and all the things that would make a turkey content.

Other evidence suggests that the 1918 virus might have mutated within pigs (which are uniquely susceptible to both human and bird viruses) or even in human populations for a time before reaching the deadly virtuosity of its final version. We cannot be sure. What we can be sure of is that there is scientific consensus that new viruses, which move between farmed animals and humans, will be a major global health threat into the foreseeable future. The concern is not only bird flu or swine flu or whatever-comes-next, but the entire class of “zoonotic” (animal-to-human or vice versa) pathogens — especially viruses that move between humans, chickens, turkeys, and pigs.

Standing on a golden perch behind the door was a decrepit-looking bird that resembled a half-plucked turkey. Harry stared at it and the bird looked balefully back, making its gagging noise again. Harry thought it looked very ill. Its eyes were dull and, even as Harry watched, a couple more feathers fell out of its tail. Harry was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore's pet bird to die while he was alone in the office with it, when the bird burst into flames. Harry yelled in shock and backed away into the desk. He looked feverishly around in case there was a glass of water somewhere but couldn't see one; the bird, meanwhile, had become a fireball; it gave one loud shriek and next second there was nothing but a smoldering pile of ash on the floor. The office door opened. Dumbledore came in, looking very somber. "Professor," Harry gasped. "Your bird- I couldn't do anything- he just caught fire-" To Harry's astonishment, Dumbledore smiled. "About time, too," he said. "He's been looking dreadful for days; I've been telling him to get a move on." He chuckled at the stunned look on Harry's face. "Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes. Watch him..." Harry looked down in time to see a tiny, wrinkled, newborn bird poke its head out of the ashes. It was quite as ugly as the old one. "It's a shame you had to see him on a Burning Day," said Dumbledore, seating himself behind his desk. "He's really very handsome most of the time, wonderful red and gold plumage. Fascinating creatures, phoenixes. They can carry immensely heavy loads, their tears have healing powers, and they make highly faithful pets.

The mainland of Greece was dark; and somewhere off Euboea a cloud must have touched the waves and spattered them—the dolphins circling deeper and deeper into the sea. Violent was the wind now rushing down the Sea of Marmara between Greece and the plains of Troy. In Greece and the uplands of Albania and Turkey, the wind scours the sand and the dust, and sows itself thick with dry particles. And then it pelts the smooth domes of the mosques, and makes the cypresses, standing stiff by the turbaned tombstones of Mohammedans, creak and bristle. Sandra’s veils were swirled about her. “I will give you my copy,” said Jacob. “Here. Will you keep it?” (The book was the poems of Donne.) Now the agitation of the air uncovered a racing star. Now it was dark. Now one after another lights were extinguished. Now great towns—Paris—Constantinople—London—were black as strewn rocks. Waterways might be distinguished. In England the trees were heavy in leaf. Here perhaps in some southern wood an old man lit dry ferns and the birds were startled. The sheep coughed; one flower bent slightly towards another. The English sky is softer, milkier than the Eastern. Something gentle has passed into it from the grass–rounded hills, something damp. The salt gale blew in at Betty Flanders’s bedroom window, and the widow lady, raising herself slightly on her elbow, sighed like one who realizes, but would fain ward off a little longer—oh, a little longer!—the oppression of eternity. But to return to Jacob and Sandra. They had vanished. There was the Acropolis; but had they reached it? The columns and the Temple remain; the emotion of the living breaks fresh on them year after year; and of that what remains?

The most widely marketed poultry—broiler-fryer chickens, turkeys, Cornish game hens, ducks, and geese—are all young, tender birds. For that reason, broiling, frying, and roasting are the preferred preparation methods.

Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race “looking out for its best interests,” as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.

The English language once had a word for the characteristic impression that a plant or animal offers to the eye. We called it the “jizz,” and the adoption of that term as sexual slang is unfortunate, as it seems unlikely we’ll come up with a replacement. It is the jizz, for example, that allows a skilled birdwatcher to know a bird by its silhouette alone , or by some quality of movement or the way it holds its head. The strangely unsteady flight of the turkey vulture, the flat forehead of the Barrow’s goldeneye, the endless headlong running of sanderlings on a mudflat— each of these is the jizz. It is so pure an essence that, if captured in a few rough lines drawn with charcoal, it can express an animal more authentically than a portrait by a trained artist who has never carefully watched the creatures he paints. It’s the jizz that ancient art so often represents. While looking at Egyptian treasures in a museum, I felt a rush of nostalgia when an engraving of a scarab beetle reminded me that I used to see a related species, the tumblebug, or Canthon simplex, roll balls of dung across my home prairie. I had completely forgotten; it took a 3,500-year-old artifact from another continent to make me remember.

Plutarch on eating flesh Plutarch would have spoilt many a traditional Christmas Dinner . . . imagine him there, grim faced as the turkey is brought out: It all began the same way that tyrants began to slaughter men. At Athens the first man they put to death was the worst of their informers, who everyone said deserved it. The second was the same sort of man, and so was the third. But after that, the Athenians were accustomed to bloodshed and looked on passively when Niceratus, son of Nicias, and the general Thramenes, and Polemarchus the philosopher were executed. In the same way the first animal was killed and eaten was a wild and mischievous beast, and then a bird and a fish were caught. And murder, being thus tried and practised upon creatures like these, arrived at the labouring ox, and the sheep that clothes us, and the cock that guards our house. And little by little, our desires hardening, we proceeded to the slaughter of men, wars and massacres. Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds . .

This landscape consists of Pablo Casals' cello and four turkey vultures riding the ribbon of warm air rising from the highway. Concrete forms for abstractions my mind can only grope at: the wings and blood, the blue and black and float and soar, the aching beauty.

They cooked more than three hundred plates of the food the great Montezuma was going to eat, and more than a thousand more for the guard. I have heard that they used to cook him the flesh of young boys. But as he had such a variety of dishes, made of so many different ingredients, we could not tell whether a dish was of human flesh or anything else, since every day they cooked fowls, turkeys, pheasants, local partridges, quail, tame and wild duck, venison, wild boar, marsh birds, pigeons, hares and rabbits, also many other kinds of birds and beasts native to their country, so numerous that I cannot quickly name them all.

The tour of the South Caucasus in 2018 ends where the book began, in the mountains. The extraordinary natural features of the Caucasus cross all political boundaries, and its extraordinary landscape and outstanding biodiversity are its often-hidden glory. Foreign visitors are awestruck by these landscapes, still far less developed than the alpine zones of western Europe. The World Wildlife Fund has named the wider Caucasus region—stretching into Russia and Turkey—one of thirty-five “biodiversity hotspots” on the planet, with over 1,650 indigenous plants and animals in nine climate zones. To name but three examples of this biodiversity: the mountains of Georgia and Azerbaijan contain more species of oak than western Europe, as they survived the last Ice Age; a few mountain leopards still prowl the highlands of Armenia; and less than 200 “goitered gazelles” are to be found on the borders of Azerbaijan and Georgia. Some natural spectacles draw visitors from all over the world. From late August to early October, birdwatchers come to the Black Sea coast of Georgia to see the annual migration southwards of millions of birds of prey through a 10-kilometer-wide corridor between the sea and the Lesser Caucasus Mountains known as the “Batumi bottleneck.” On October 2, 2014, after days of rain kept the gates of the corridor closed, an astonishing 271,000 birds were counted flying through and darkening the skies.

Q: If a Pilgrim threw a pumpkin into the air, what came down? A: Squash! Q: How did the Pilgrims catch squirrels? A: They climbed trees and acted like nuts. Q: How did the Pilgrims spell mousetrap with only three letters? A: C A T A turkey is a funny bird It’s head goes wobble, wobble. All it knows is just one word, “Gobble, gobble, gobble!

The Apache Indians were wandering tribes who lived in the Southwest. Their dances are religious ceremonies in which they worship their gods: the sun, the moon, the planets, wind, rain, thunder, lightning, and certain animals. Many charms and fetishes are used in these ceremonies. The masks and headdresses are made under the supervision of a priest, and before they are assembled, the dancers go through the purifying ceremony of a sweat bath. The medicine men’s costumes of the Apache Devil Dance are very colorful and are all somewhat different. There are usually four dancers, one representing the devil. Attached to the cloth mask which covers the face is a fan-shaped headdress made of thin narrow trips of yucca wood. These strips are arranged in many different ways and are painted with symbols representing the sun, moon, rain, stars, lightning, and so forth. Sometimes these designs were perforated through the thin slabs of wood. This fan is supposed to represent the spread tail feathers of a great bird. Sometimes turkey feathers were used on the headdress in place of the wooden fan. The Apache medicine men made two sets of masks. These marks were used until it was felt that they had been worn out and had lost their magic powers. Then they were replaced with new masks, having strong and fresh medicine.

Sky Burial   Standing ‘mongst the dogs all squint of eye and crane of neck until I named the circling turkey buzzard speck of cumulus nimbus. Such scavengers bring me pause. Earth was lying easy on her back and breathing into blue, a thermal sigh, lifting bird and wonder to where this one might fly. The expanse so vast along the glaciered seam of plains and mountains, distance and the silence held still a dusky moment for the bird to preen in copper light on rocky moraine, preparing for its earnest work. In Tibet, whether monk or peasant, in breaching death, the empty vessel is washed in water, in prayer, carried by solemn procession into thinning air, laid prone, left alone, sacred fare, shared by vultures as spirit migrates to a new birth, born again somewhere. If we are attending to the way, we pass through many deaths. Birds can be a sign of such transitions. Yes, the buzzard had me thinking I was once a starling lost in false murmurations. Today, my name is lone hawk on bare limb.

In The End of Jobs, Taylor Pearson calls this The Turkey Problem, inspired by a clever analogy found in Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan. Taleb writes: “Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.” Bye-bye Mr. Turkey. The turkey thinks he’s safe, until he realizes at the last minute that he’s not. We tend to believe that working at big corporations keeps us safe. But in reality, it’s the job of the HR department to make you feel that way, even if it’s not true. Every day you work at a large corporation, you’re building up silent risk. One day, you might realize you’re a turkey. Do you remember a company called Lehman Brothers? I know it’s a distant memory for some, but before 2008 it was the 4th largest investment bank in the United States. Then it went bankrupt. Bye-bye.

Though wild turkeys may not be the PhDs of the bird world----that distinction goes to the common crow----they do have the capability to learn and remember important survival information from their environment and from those of their own kind.

But Tad was touchingly tenderhearted. When Jack, the turkey being fattened for Christmas, became his pet, Tad's distress was so great that his father granted the bird a pardon–a custom that continues today.

Birds eating birds” sounds like a sleazy talk-show topic, but in this case I’m referring to feeding your parakeet chicken and turkey meat.

Mrs. Proudie insisted on our going down to the house,” continued the mother, “and when there, I thought I might save a journey by measuring some of the rooms and windows; so I got a knot of tape from Bobbins. Bobbins is as civil as you please, now.” “I wouldn’t thank him,” said Letty the younger. “Oh, it’s the way of the world, my dear. They all do just the same. You might just as well be angry with the turkey cock for gobbling at you. It’s the bird’s nature.” And as she enunciated to her bairns the upshot of her practical experience, she pulled from her pocket the portions of tape which showed the length and breadth of the various rooms at the hospital house.

After several hours of preparing, cooking, eating, and laughing together, the kitchen was now lit by the glow of candlelight, and the entire house filled with the glorious aroma of freshly roasted heritage turkey. While Dylan had readied the bird with a few sprigs of chopped rosemary, ground black peppercorn, and a splash of maple syrup, Grace and Carter gathered fall beans and bush squash and a few little sugar pie pumpkins, and cooked the vegetables along with the sweet corn that Carter had brought home.

By a quirk of biological history, the pre-Columbian Americas had few domesticated animals; no cattle, horses, sheep, or goats graced its farmlands. Most big animals are tamable, in the sense that they can be trained to lose their fear of people, but only a few species are readily domesticable—that is, willing to breed easily in captivity, thereby letting humans select for useful characteristics. In all of history, humankind has been able to domesticate only twenty-five mammals, a dozen or so birds, and, possibly, a lizard. Just six of these creatures existed in the Americas, and they played comparatively minor roles: the dog, eaten in Central and South America and used for labor in the far north; the guinea pig, llama, and alpaca, which reside in the Andes; the turkey, raised in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest; the Muscovy duck, native to South America despite its name; and, some say, the iguana, farmed in Mexico and Central America.* The lack of domestic animals had momentous consequences. In a country without horses, donkeys, and cattle, the only source of transportation and labor was the human body. Compared to England, Tsenacomoco had slower communications (no galloping horses), a dearth of plowed fields (no straining oxen) and pastures (no grazing cattle), and fewer and smaller roads (no carriages to accommodate). Battles were fought without cavalry; winters endured without wool; logs skidded through the forest without oxen. Distances loomed larger when people had to walk from place to place; indeed, in terms of the time required for Powhatan’s orders to reach his minions, Tsenacomoco may have been the size of England itself (it was much less populous, of course).

Even so, the poultry industry and agribusiness generally worry that the public may come to perceive them as morally handicapped, as indeed they are. It is a sign of moral handicap to mutilate the mouth of a bird, cage her for life, starve her for money, and propose blindness as a "solution" to her suffering. It is a sign of moral handicap to force chickens and turkeys to grow so big so fast that it is painful for them merely to stand on their feet, to take away chickens' feathers, make fun of them, and force them to huddle naked together in their own waste waiting to be killed. The poultry industry is not only cruel, but obscene. It isn't only the masturbation and artificial insemination of "breeder" turkeys and increasingly of chickens, ducks, and geese, or the sticking of balloons and tampons in the uteri of laying hens and making them die a death that only a savage would conceive of. For thousands of years, human beings have violated the bodies and family life of birds and other living beings.

The bird is obviously heavy and Sheila’s not getting any younger. She fears the day when Sheila twists an ankle in those heels and goes down with the turkey on top of her.

But about a year ago, as Kya strolled through a stand of pines, she'd heard a high-pitched shriek. A flock of fifteen wild turkeys - mostly hens, a few toms and jakes - rushed about, pecking what looked like an oily rag crumpled in the dirt. Dust stirred from their feet and shrouded the woods, drifting up through branches, caught there. As Kya had crept closer, she saw it was a hen turkey on the ground, and the birds of her own flock were pecking and toe-scratching her neck and head. Somehow she'd manage to get her wings so tangled with briars, her feathers stuck out at strange angles and she could no longer fly. Jodie had said that if a bird becomes different from the others - disfigured or wounded - it is more likely to attract a predator, so the rest of the flock will kill it, which is better than drawing in an eagle, who might take one of them in the bargain.

Brandon picked up his beer and tipped it at me. “Josh is actually great at that. That’s why he always bags a bird.” He was wingmanning me for Kristen. I just hoped she found dead turkeys sexy. Kristen smiled at me. A genuine smile. “Have you hunted all your life?” “Yup.” I put the lid on the pot call and handed it back to Brandon. Kristen poked at her salad. Then she looked back up at me, her eyes innocent. “Is it true that ‘vegetarian’ is a Native American word for ‘bad hunter’?” Brandon laughed so suddenly he choked. I smiled at her, happy to see her coming back to her old self. “You know, I still don’t have a car,” Sloan said over her pasta after Brandon stopped laughing. “You two broke my Corolla.” Kristen snorted. “Really? You’re going to put this on us? The hamster probably died.” “What hamster?” Sloan looked confused. Kristen skewered a crouton. “The one running in the wheel under the hood.” Brandon and I laughed, and Sloan pressed her lips into a line, trying to look angry, but she couldn’t keep a straight face. “How can you let her drive that thing?” I shook my head at Brandon. “I told her, I don’t know how many times, that I’ll buy her a new car,” Brandon said, still chuckling. Sloan shrugged. “I don’t want a new car. That was the car I learned to drive in. I had my first kiss in that car.” Brandon gave her a mock serious look. “Well, then it definitely has to go.” Sloan smiled at him and leaned over and kissed him fleetingly on the lips. I watched my best friend look at her for a moment after she went back to her food. He really loved her. I remembered the first time he started talking about her, three years ago. We were sitting in a duck blind in South Dakota, and he went on for hours about this woman he’d been seeing. I’d never seen him so into someone. I made a mental note to talk about that during my best-man speech. “Hey, didn’t you two meet on a call?” I asked, trying to recall the story he’d told me. “At a hospital or something?” Sloan smiled sweetly at Brandon. “Yeah. I only gave him my number because he was in uniform.” I grinned. “Can’t say no to a man in uniform, huh?” I twirled my fork around my pasta. It was incredible. Some kind of venison Bolognese. Sloan was a great cook. Kristen and I really should eat here more often. “No, I can,” she said. “It’s just I figured they wouldn’t let a felon or registered sex offender into the fire department.

There is a knock at the door and Mom answers it. “Hi, Joe, how are you doing?” “Terrific, I hope you have enough room in your refrigerator for this big bird! The Blisses send their best wishes.” Joe, a very thin wiry man, came close to stumbling over the threshold as he juggled the big, cold, slippery bird through the living room ‘round to our kitchen and into the refrigerator. “Thanks Joe, Happy Thanksgiving to you and all your family. Can you stay for a cup of coffee and some warm cookies?” “No thanks, I’m pressed for time and have a few more stops to make. I’ll see you at Christmas time.” We always saw Joe Lynch every Thanksgiving and Christmas making his rounds with the gift Turkeys from the Blisses. One year we saw him in the grocery store and he asked my Mom, “How many pounds should the bird be this year?” Whether Thanksgiving or Christmas, the gift birds were always appreciated and would always be stuffed with Grandma’s secret recipe dressing passed down from her family in Argentina. One of the secret ingredients is Gulden’s mustard. It just wouldn’t be the holidays without that heavenly aroma teasing our senses for hours.

...the only birds I can recognize without hesitation are the turkey vulture, the fried chicken, and the rosey-bottomed skinny-dipper.

But about a year ago, as Kya strolled through a stand of pines, she’d heard a high-pitched shriek. A flock of fifteen wild turkeys—mostly hens, a few toms and jakes—rushed about, pecking what looked like an oily rag crumpled in the dirt. Dust stirred from their feet and shrouded the woods, drifting up through branches, caught there. As Kya had crept closer, she saw it was a hen turkey on the ground, and the birds of her own flock were pecking and toe-scratching her neck and head. Somehow she’d managed to get her wings so tangled with briars, her feathers stuck out at strange angles and she could no longer fly. Jodie had said that if a bird becomes different from the others—disfigured or wounded—it is more likely to attract a predator, so the rest of the flock will kill it, which is better than drawing in an eagle, who might take one of them in the bargain

The vulture would never stand again, would never feel a warm column of air under its great wings, would never incubate an egg or feed a chick.

Finally, thank you to the vultures, past and present, that I've had the pleasure to work with-both the non-releasable vultures I've known intimately (especially Lew, Maveric, Boris, and Vader), and the wild vultures in rehabilitation and in the field. May your roosts be warm, your thermals strong, and your carrion only slightly spoiled

The size and shape of the birds have also made it impossible for commercial turkeys to mount and breed naturally. This means that workers at breeding facilities have to masturbate male turkeys, called toms, to collect their semen. Then, in rapid succession, the females are turned upside down and their legs secured by a clamp. The semen is put in straws and inserted into the hen. She’s then released from the clamp, making way for the next in line. Not a pleasant process for the bird, nor a job one can take much pride in.

When the crops were thriving, Squanto took the men to the open forests where the turkey dwelled. He pointed out the nuts, seeds, and insects that the iridescent birds fed upon. He showed them the leaf nests of the squirrels and the hideouts of the skunks and raccoons. Walking silently along bear trails, he took them to the blueberry patches. He told them that deer moved about at sundown and sunrise. He took them inland to valleys where the deer congregated in winter and were easy to harvest. He walked the Pilgrims freely over the land. To Squanto, as to all Native Americans, the land did not belong to the people, people belonged to the land. He took the children into the meadows to pick wild strawberries. He showed them how to dig up the sweet roots of the wild Jerusalem artichoke. In mid-summer he led them to cranberry bogs and gooseberry patches. Together they gathered chestnuts, hickory nuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts in September. He paddled the boys into the harbor in his dugout canoe to set lobster pots made of reeds and sinew. While they waited to lift their pots, he taught them the creatures of the tidal pools.

Turkey is the main course in more Christmas dinners than any other meat or fowl. The high proportion of meat to unusable bone and fat makes it an ideal bird for a feast. Turkeys were domesticated in Mexico long before Spanish explores found them and introduced them into their homeland. From there they spread throughout Europe and gradually replaced most of the native Christmas feast foods.

Holly Berries A Confederate Christmas Story by Refugitta There was, first, behind the clear crystal pane, a mammoth turkey, so fat that it must have submitted to be killed from sheer inability to eat and move, hung all around with sausage balls and embowered in crisp white celery with its feathered tops. Many a belated housekeeper or father of a family, passing by, cast loving glances at the monster bird, and turned away with their hands on depleted purses and arms full of brown paper parcels. Then there were straw baskets of eggs, white and shining with the delightful prospect of translation into future eggnogs; pale yellow butter stamped with ears of corn, bee hives, and statuesque cows with their tails in an attitude. But these were all substantials, and the principal attraction was the opposition window, where great pyramids of golden oranges, scaly brown pineapples, festoons of bananas, boxes of figs and raisins with their covers thrown temptingly aside, foreign sauces and pickles, cheeses, and gilded walnuts were arranged in picturesque regularity, jut, as it seemed, almost within reach of one’s olfactories and mouth, until a closer proximity realized the fact of that thick plate glass between. Inside it was just the same: there were barrels and boxes in a perfect wilderness; curious old foreign packages and chests, savory of rare teas and rarer jellies; cinnamon odors like gales from Araby meeting you at every turn; but yet everything, from the shining mahogany counter under the brilliant gaslight, up to the broad, clean, round face of the jolly grocer Pin, was so neat and orderly and inviting that you felt inclined to believe yourself requested to come in and take off things by the pocketful, without paying a solitary cent. I acknowledge that it was an unreasonable distribution of favors for Mr. Pin to own, all to himself, this abundance of good things. Now, in my opinion, little children ought to be the shop keepers when there are apples and oranges to be sold, and I know they will all agree with me, for I well remember my earliest ambition was that my papa would turn confectioner, and then I could eat my way right through the store. But our friend John Pin was an appreciative person, and not by any means forgetful of his benefits. All day long and throughout the short afternoon, his domain had been thronged with busy buyers, old and young, and himself and his assistant (a meager-looking young man of about the dimensions of a knitting needle) constantly employed in supplying their demands. From the Southern Illustrated News.

So what's on the menu?" "We soak prunes in whisky and tea, dip them in honey, and stuff them with walnuts. These are mixed with sausage for the stuffing. I usually soak the prunes for several days, but we'll make do." "My God. That sounds fabulous." Elliott nodded, but said nothing. He was staring at her intently. "And..." "And..." What was he waiting for? He started to fiddle with the pencil. Finally she realized he was waiting for her input! He had no idea how to banter back-and-forth or to brainstorm creatively. She broke the awkward silence. "Elliott, are you waiting for my suggestions for dinner?" "Aye. I'm waiting." "I think... we should go with the honey." "I use heather honey in North Berwick. But I'm sure the honey here will be fine." "My favorite is from the Akins Apiary. They have delicious apple honey. It's rare, but I'll see if they have some in the pantry." "Excellent. What... what else do you like about the honey?" Sophia tried not to laugh out loud at Elliott's stilted and awkward attempt at conversation. The give-and-take was clearly not a natural process for him. "Let's use the honey in all our dishes. How about roasted vegetables in a balsamic-honey dressing? With thyme? I think rutabaga and turnips would be a nice side for the turkey." He scratched something on his tablet. "Keep going." "And how about a bitter green salad? Maybe arugula and dandelion greens with a honey vinaigrette That will cut the richness of the bird." Elliott nodded. "I like both of those ideas. This meal will showcase the best of both of us... a traditional Scottish roast bird and various preparations for the vegetables and greens.

As soon as we open the apartment door, we can smell the turkey roasting. I've cooked it in a paper bag (a neat trick that ensures an incredibly moist bird without basting). The smell is a heady combination of roasting turkey, and apple brandy, butter, and wild mushrooms that I've combined and rubbed on the inside of the bird and under the skin of the breast and legs. It will be delicious.