An Interview With a Turkey

by Jill Carpenter, Special to the Messenger

Jill Carpenter of Sewanee recently met up with a large turkey, who generously answered all of her turkey questions. A transcription of their conversation follows.

Jill Carpenter (JC): Let’s begin at the beginning. Where are you from?

Turkey (T): Excellent question. I am NOT from the country of Turkey! I am as American as you are, only more so. 

The Native Americans had names for me: guh-nuh in Cherokee, ziizike in Winnebago…but I reminded the first English colonists of a distant cousin of mine from Turkey! So they called me a Turkey fowl. 

Then the word fowl was dropped, and I became a turkey, lower case. It stuck. And let me clarify this: we are NOT related to turkey vultures—their naked red heads reminded someone of us! They must get tired of explaining, too.

JC: So what is your real name?

T: The old classifier Linnaeus gave us the scientific name Meleagris gallopavo. It translates into guineafowl-rooster-peacock. How original is that? Call me Tom.

JC: Tom, you mentioned those cousins…

T: We are a cosmopolitan family, the Phasianids. All over the world: jungle fowl—chickens to you—pheasants, grouse, quail. We are down-to-earth: feed on the ground, lay eggs on the ground. You call us easily domesticated, we call us civilized. A blessing and a curse.

JC: How so?

T: Humans grow and scatter the corn. Blessing. But they want something in return—our eggs, our young, sandwiches… A brutal species. No offense.

JC: None taken. I like your tie, Tom.

T: Good try, but it’s not a tie, it’s a “beard” made of feathers. Only guy “turkeys” have it. It gives us extra panache.

JC: And the red decorations? A guy thing, too?

T: Righty-O. The head drape is a snood, the matching chin drape is a wattle. They are bare skin, and when I’m trying to get a girl’s attention or to tell another Tom to back off, they fill with blood and get bigger and redder. Cool, huh? And I fan out my tail, and sort of hold out my wings like so, so they almost drag the ground, and I stand very tall. Then I strut. A peacock has nothing on me. And cry your eyes out, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

JC: Whoa!

T: Females don’t have any of these fancy accouterments, but they choose the cocky guys. Darwin got the picture.

JC: How do you spend your days, Tom? You can’t strut all the time.

T: Eat, survive, reproduce. Strut in between. I’m good at endurance, as well as sprints. We run around all day in flocks, scratching the ground, so we have very strong leg muscles. You may have seen some turkey legs at summer festivals. Deep fried, large, like everything in Tennessee. Me, I’m a vegetarian, mainly—seeds are my thing—but I do eat a few insects and other arthropods. Ticks are especially good. Mmm-mmm!

JC: Nature, red in tooth and claw.

T: Well, I’m a bird, and I don’t have teeth, but unfortunately, that’s about it. Some human once said to me, if we’re not supposed to eat you, then why are you made of meat? 

JC: Good point. 

T: A mountain lion is made of meat, too. Not as nice as turkey meat. But try to domesticate a mountain lion! Primitive creatures.

JC: Yeah.

T: Also, when we sense danger, we can really take off. You call it “flushing.” Sometimes just the whoosh will intimidate the mountain lion. Now I’ll tell you something about muscles. Ready for the technical stuff?

JC: Go for it!

T: Two kinds. We have one kind in our legs—muscles that are excellent at endurance. We call them slow-twitch, you call them dark meat. 

JC: Aha!

T: We have another kind in our breasts. Those are our flight muscles, fast twitch, white meat to you. They are great for quick sprints, but they exhaust easily. We flush. Then we have to rest our wings, and use our legs again. It basically has to do with aerobic and anaerobic metabolism, but we’ll leave it at that.

JC: My next question might be a little insensitive, Tom, but I have to ask it. I always heard that turkeys were kind of—how to say this?—not too swift? Would drown in a rainstorm?

T: That old urban legend always gets my wattle! How do those things get started?

JC: You do have kind of a small head.

T: That’s got nothing to do with anything. Our heads are as big as they need to be. A rainstorm? Puh-leeze!

JC: And why do pictures of turkeys in barnyards show white turkeys?

T: Duh. Skin kinda matches feathers, and they have that nice pinky skin that people like.

JC: Finally, I want to ask you about turkeys in art and literature.

T: Sure thing. Every November, kids trace their hands, or make a handprint, and there it is: a turkey. The fingers represent tail feathers. Add a beak and a wattle, and you’ve got a national icon. 

Or use a pinecone for the body, construction paper feathers for the tail, and pipe cleaners for the head and the neck decor. Female turkeys are camouflaged to sit on the eggs, so they are not as well represented in art as guys. We take the risks, we get the glory. 

Literature? Native Americans had lots of stories about me. I was often a guest, albeit sacrificial, at ceremonies.

JC: Thanks, Tom. This has been terrific!

T: Let’s do it again if I’m around next year.