It is Sunday, the final day of Thanksgiving weekend.  I am jogging past my neighbor’s mini-farm and
I notice that the big tom turkey that had been there with several hens was no
longer around.  There were three hens
near the fence.  They make a sound that I
first thought was like a hoot but that I have now decided is more like what you’d
get if you combined a spit and a whistle.  Whether they were expressing mourning or relief I couldn’t say.  But it certainly looked like the gobbler had
sacrificed his life to feed a family of five. 

There was a time when the turkey (genus Meleagris) almost
achieved greatness.  Old Ben Franklin
promoted it to be the national bird.  Instead, our country’s symbol became the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), a bird of
prey.  Meanwhile, the poor domestic
turkey became what you might call a bird of pray, as in:  “Thank you, Lord, for this meal of which we
are about to partake.” 

Now the mighty bald eagle sits at the top of the food chain,
while the lowly turkey provides drumsticks for all the Uncle Harrys that come
to visit once a year for the big meal.  Since the average weight of a bald eagle is only 10 to 14 pounds, Uncle
Harry might not have enjoyed a second helping had not the turkey lost out in
the national debate. 

As I prefer ham for Thanksgiving dinner (pigs are a whole
other story!), I actually do not participate in the annual mass slaughter of
turkeys, but I am still happy that the bald eagle won out to become our
national bird.  The word “bald,”
apparently, once meant white. Anyway, bald eagles seem to deserve having been
spared the ignominy visited upon the lowly turkey.  Soaring up above us all, protected by both
the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald & Golden Eagle Protection Act,
bald eagles accomplish something few humans are capable of doing:  they mate for life.  With an average lifespan of 15 to 20 years,
that’s longer than most human couples remain together.