GOBBLE, GOBBLE by Scott Lemmon
B
efore you enjoy Grandma’s traditional Thanksgiving turkey, maybe you’d like to know a little more about this truly American bird. Many of you have seen the ancestor of the domestic turkey strolling through your neighborhoods here in Cherokee County, and they’re here year-round. Did you know that Benjamin Franklin preferred the wild turkey as the national bird of the United States? He criticized the choice of the bald eagle and suggested that a turkey would have made a better alternative. In a letter to his daughter, he wrote:
European explorers took them to Europe from Mexico in the early 1500s. They were so successfully domesticated there that English colonists brought turkeys back with them when they settled on the Atlantic Coast. The range and numbers of wild turkeys had decreased in the early 1900s due to hunting and loss of habitat. Game managers believe that their numbers were as low as 30,000, but current estimates place their population at more than 7 million.
“For the truth the Turkey is in comparison (to the Bald Eagle) 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...”
The wild turkey prefers oak and pine forests, and young birds (known as poults) need open areas where they can forage for insects. Wild turkeys are omnivorous, but prefer eating acorns, nuts, seeds, berries, roots and insects. They sometimes visit backyard bird feeders to pick uneaten seed from the ground. Turkeys are strong flyers, and are often seen high up in trees, although they prefer to forage on the ground.
This letter to Franklin’s daughter was written after Congress spent six years choosing the bald eagle as the emblem of the United States!
So before you enjoy your Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings, take a little time to give thanks for the resiliency of the wild turkey.
The wild turkey is one of only two domesticated birds originating in the New World. (The other is the Muscovy duck.) 46
Scott Lemmon can be reached at (770) 928-3014 or by e-mail at wbuwoodstock@comcast.net.
AROUNDABOUT ACWORTH
NOVEMBER 2010