Otus the Head Cat
Turkey pardoning bad for America.
Otus the Head Cat is taking the day off to celebrate his Owner’s birthday Tuesday. By popular demand, here is his classic Thanksgiving column that first ran Nov. 26, 2005. Dear Otus,
Every year they make a big deal about the president “pardoning” some stupid turkey for Thanksgiving. If everyone decided to pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving, thousands of turkey farmers like me would go broke. Just when the heck did all this turkey pardoning get started?
— Tripp Tophan III,
Hartford Dear Tripp,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you. I feel your pain. During my temporal and corporeal sojourn (1975-1992), I was known to have partaken of a bird or two. Generally these were sparrows and the occasional robin, but Owner would toss me a slice of turkey at Thanksgiving. It tasted like chicken.
According to the fine folks at the National Turkey Federation (yes, there’s a federation for turkeys), about 245 million turkeys are raised in the United States each year — 26.5 million in Arkansas, behind only Minnesota and North Carolina.
An astonishing 92 percent of all Americans eat turkey, turkey byproducts or some mysterious faux turkey such as tofurky or turkam (turkey Spam) on Thanksgiving.
The average Thanksgiving turkey weighs an impressive 15 pounds, but the force-fed domesticated monsters that they drag to the White House tip the scales between 25 and 35 pounds.
A 35-pound turkey can do some damage. Their beaks are razor sharp and their toothlike serrations (tomia) are like needles. I would pardon the thing, too.
According to the legend that has risen around the annual presidential turkey pardoning, the first turkey was officially pardoned by President Harry S. Truman in 1947.
There are those who credit President Abraham Lincoln with pardoning the first turkey because Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863 to celebrate the Union victory at Gettysburg. It was to be the fourth Thursday of every November.
Saying it would be an economic boost, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving up to the third Thursday in 1939, but Congress stepped in and fixed it back in 1941.
And every schoolchild in America (excepting the homeschooled and certain charter schools) has been taught how Benjamin Franklin lobbied to have the turkey as the official bird of the United States.
Franklin wrote that the bald eagle was of “bad moral character” and the turkey was far more respectable. That his wishes were not granted has kept us from having the disturbing sight of presidents pardoning bald eagles on Thanksgiving.
At any rate, since 1947 the National Turkey Federation has presented the president with a strapping bird in honor of Thanksgiving. It’s always a lavish publicity photo-op at the White House.
Depending on his comfort level with fowl, the president then says a few words about the true meaning of Thanksgiving, makes a fowl joke or two and signs an official pardon proclamation.
The “lucky” turkey is then shipped off to the Kidwell Farm at Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Va.
The working/interpretive farm has a petting zoo and has been collecting pardoned White House turkeys for years. Each is allowed to live out its natural life surrounded by all the luxuries that any turkey could ever hope for.
Unfortunately, this normally lasts until the first heavy downpour when the turkey looks skyward and drowns.
Over the years there have been 55 officially pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys shipped off to the farm. Well, technically, there have been only 54.
In 1993, the first year the Clintons were in the White House, nobody informed the president of the turkey pardoning tradition.
So when the Rose Garden ceremony took place, an overly zealous Bill Clinton was eager to demonstrate his bird-dispatching technique that had been taught to him in high school by retired turkey farmer and bus driver Homer Michael of Hot Springs.
Before the astonished crowd of turkey federation dignitaries, Clinton grabbed the bird, stuffed it under his arm and wrung its neck.
The only other untoward incident was when President George W. Bush arrived at the 2001 ceremony believing that he was pardoning the entire nation of Turkey.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that no matter what they say in Yellville, domesticated tofurkies can’t fly.