Saturday, March 26, 2011

Dead Turkey Love

My favorite girlfriend is coming in from out of state this morning to spend the weekend with me and I'm so excited to spend some yak yak time with her.  The weather is perfect here in H-town.

My next door neighbors have five children ages four through seventeen.  The oldest girl is in FFA (future farmers of America) and decided to raise a turkey for her project this year.  She bought eighteen tiny baby turkeys which she was advised would probably lead to two turkeys reaching adulthood.  A very nice huge pen was built in their backyard (we live in a subdivision) and the tiny birds were just darling.  The youngest girl in the family, a four year old named Anna who is not in school, cared for these turkeys all day while the older kids were away.  She fed them with a dropper, sat in their pen for hours each day, and gave each turkey some major "4 year old girl love."  All eighteen turkeys made it to adulthood and it has been comical to watch Anna with these birds.  She would sneak four or five at a time into her bed at night until they got so big she got caught.  D Day came for the turkeys a couple of weeks ago.  One turkey was sold at auction and my neighbors had to send the remaining ones to the meat processor to dress and keep themselves.  They brought home all these turkeys fully dressed and all the neighbors have been stuffing them in all available freezers.  Anna knew that the turkeys would be killed but she thought that the dead turkeys would come back to her house and lay out in the yard fully feathered and with their heads of course and that she would be able to "play with them better because they would be still."  Every day when I come home from work she runs to my garage where my freezer is and begs to see her turkeys.  Every day I open the freezer door and she pats a big turkey ball and says "hey baby, it's me.....Anna."  Sigh.

8 comments:

Hope said...

Oh, what a sweet girl.

Anonymous said...

God love her little soul.

Syd said...

Oh me, I would have kept all. I don't kill anything here except broccoli, cabbage and collard greens. Maybe I should turn this into a farm for rescued farm animals.

Kathy M. said...

Oh, my! Kids do see things differently, don't they. What a great story. Thanks for sharing.

Jess Mistress of Mischief said...

OMG! LOL!

I remember the day I realized that the cows and pigs I was feeding and loving every day were the very same as the ones on the table next season! It wasn't until I was around 26 years old that I figured out the visits to the turkey farm weren't just fun field trips and that the "favorite Tom" that Grandpa had us pick out was actually Thanksgiving dinner.

Thank God, cause I really enjoyed turkey up until then and the family really didn't need the drama of me knowing that, the fit I threw about the pigs and cows was bad enough. I VERY VOCALLY though I would be a vegetarian ... for a few hours.

Jess Mistress of Mischief said...

PS I'm really really glad you're back!

Bill said...

Boy oh boy...I got a laugh here at work whether I needed it or not. Thank goodness we're at the end of a long secluded hallway. This is hilarious. I can't believe that all 18 of those damned turkeys lived to adulthood.

Andrew said...

Bless her heart! What an amazing story. I know zilch about Turkeys and raising them, but if only 2 were expected to reach maturity, well, I think it is a good example of the power of love.