Pity the Poor Turkey!

Welp, it’s Turkey day tomorrow. Ever think about what a turkey’s life is like? Let’s talk about the wild ones, not the domesticated ones that folks who eat bird gobble (sorry, couldn’t help the pun) up on turkey day.

Wild turkeys, believe it or not, can fly. Last month as I was heading from TN to SC, I saw this huge thing coming across the interstate, plumper than a buzzard with something hanging down like a wind sock for a flight path.

Yup, it was a turkey. They fly. They roost in trees. There’s always a tom with the hens. They’re ferocious fighters. they protect their young with all their might.

And for this, and because they were easy for the early settlers to hunt, as they were for indigenous people before them, a harvest meal specialty.

The way turkeys grow in the wild versus in pens for domestic consumption? Dramatically different. And just what does this have to do with trauma? How is it we have to slaughter one thing to give thanks for another? what was the difference between how indigenous people hunted and how settlers hunted?

Respect. In the simple differences between how people hunt, and how wild versus domesticated turkeys are raised? Respect. Care for the earth, recognition of the sacrifice a creature makes to become my meal? I wonder if it makes a difference in how that meal is processed by my food?