Happy Thanksgiving!!

Your ever-faithful blogger is blogging on her day off. This shows her true dedication to the cause of turkeys. Now I shall stop referring to myself in the third person and start posting pictures of turkeys. You can see some of the wild turkeys who live near the sanctuary in this blog's header. I caught that shot during a mating ritual in which all the tom turkeys were attempting to woo the same turkey hen. She laughed at them all. Seriously.

Please take heart, my fellow turkey lovers. This post is for you. Print it out or drag the computer around with you, especially if the dinner table is not so kind to our turkey friends. These turkeys are lucky and happy and chowing down on food as we speak. Celebrate them. Honor them. Feel gratitude and compassion to everyone, from the suffering turkeys to the liberated mink to the oppressed people in far off lands. Think of them all for one brilliant moment and do your best to love them all.

More specifically, you may love the following:

Miss Margaret who is shiny and perfect and who affixes you with a patently perfect turkey stare. She is five and in the prime of her life, according to her anyways.

Her see-through wattle dangles precariously from the softest neck you will ever have the pleasure of stroking (no dirty thoughts, please!). She has bumps and brilliant white feathers. And she hates Maya next door. A lot.

Oh Maya, how you coo and trill and scream what can only be turkey insults at MaryLou next door. You do not like her. At all. Sometimes you fly into their house next door just to taunt and prance and puff you feathers up in displays of anger. You do not peck, merely display. MaryLou does not like it one bit, though. We shoo you back to your rightful spot, you with squawks of indignation, MaryLou with trumpeting trills of victory!

MaryLou, MaryLou, MaryLou! You are so serious, lighten up! Enjoy the sunshine and green, verdant grass.

Stop staring at me with your serious eyes, your baleful glare will not make me sympathetic. It will actually, but I will not admit to such things.

You are groomer extraordinairre. Sometimes you groom me, the chickens, the other turkeys. Mostly, you groom yourself. Digging deep into the furrows of you feathers, sliding beak up and down, pulling oils and spreading them across great expanses of feathered valleys and mountains. You are the zen master of feather cleaning.

Willow, perfect, greedy, rude, angry, happy Willow! Do not tell any of the others, but you are my favorite. You are not personable. You are not overjoyed to see me or anyone else. You are grumpy and so very serious. Each day is onerous for you, a time to puff up your feathers and scream at the other turkeys and chickens. Peck! A startled hen goes flying. Snap! A rooster runs away in horror. You laugh at it all, proud of your bad attitude. I love you for it.

Eliza! Our resident "foster turkey" - you represent all of the turkeys not so lucky to make it to a sanctuary. You take the nesting behavior to a whole new level, dedicating your body, mind and soul to that one infertile egg. You love when one of your chicken friends nests with you, sometimes all we see of you is jumbled feathers, chicken feet perched on your back, or a chicken head poking happily out from under your breast. You hiss and shrilly trill when any of us get too close to your precious package or chicken friend. Nesting is serious business.

And then there is Zarriah and Serena, two old-lady turkeys with extremely shy personalities. They turn ten this year. And there was Leland too - he died this year, but his beauty and big personality live on. Tom turkey died soon after Leland, his best bud forever. We miss both of you.

Happy Thanksgiving from all the turkeys at Animal Place!