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Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May the day be filled with love, happiness, as few political arguments as possible and lots of turkey!
Today is the day I eat my way through NYC, with a trip to the movies to help fill the time between meals. While I enjoy turkey, I rarely have it on Thanksgiving unless I am spending the day with someone who has made it.
For this installment of my #30DayWritingChallenge, however, I'm making an exception. At least in the writing department. Here are some fun facts about our feathered friends:
The domestic turkey that we enjoy on our plates is a descendant of the wild turkey, which is the one most often spotted roaming random streets these days.
The wild turkey was hunted to near extension by the early 1900s. The population then was around 30,000, but it is up to about seven million these days.
Turkeys can run as fast as 25 miles per hour and fly up to 55 mph. That's pretty impressive!
Contrary to popular lore, Benjamin Franklin did not propose making the turkey America's symbol, but he did say it was "a much more respectable bird" than the bald eagle.
The first time a President spared a turkey's life was in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln did it, but it wasn't until John F. Kennedy in 1963 that the word "pardon" was first used. And it wasn't until Ronald Reagan that the pardoning became an annual tradition.
Speaking of annual traditions, Turkey Trot races have become a part of many families' Thanksgiving celebrations. I admit to having run a few myself. The oldest one is in Buffalo where runners have been at it since 1896.
There are no turkeys in Turkey. It's a North American bird. However, the word "turkey" is associated with the country. The turkey is similar in appearance to the guinea fowl, which is native to eastern Africa and was imported to Europe through the Turk's Ottoman Empire. The Europeans began referring to the bird as a "turkey-cock" or "turkey-hen" and when they settled in the New World they discovered the birds we are familiar with and began calling them "turkeys."
Finally, despite what anyone tells you, turkeys are quite cute. And they make great huggers.
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