Was Ben Franklin suggesting we eat bald eagles?
In just three more days, you and I will be dining on turkey.
Not that you’ll hear the doorbell ring, and I’ll come stepping through your home’s entryway.
I was just trying to allude to the unmistakable fact that oven-roasted turkey will no doubt be the meal of choice come Thursday ... at my home ... as well as at yours.
Back in the 1700s, old Ben Franklin advanced the hair-brained notion that we ought to designate the wild turkey as our national bird. What a wacko idea! Do you suppose that he envisioned us wiping our mouths with table napkins that we would scissor out of our revered Stars and Stripes?
Come to think of it, this was the same dude that ventured outdoors during a violent rainstorm so he could fly a kite. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that intelligent people retreat indoors when lightning bolts come crashing down to the Earth.
Ben! Ben! Ben!
Where do you come up with such loony notions?
Actually, according to The Franklin Institute, the story about Benjamin Franklin wanting a turkey as our national symbol is a myth.
Back in 1784, Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter in which he disapproved of the country adopting the bald eagle as our national symbol. He said the drawing looked more like a turkey, and went on to note that a turkey would actually be preferable, as the bald eagle had a “bad moral character” and was a “rank coward” that merely steals from other birds.
Smithsonian magazine quotes Franklin’s original letter:
“For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America … He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”