The Turkey’s Point of View…

Ever wonder what a turkey thinks of our holiday known as Thanksgiving? Dive into our uncovered footage of a forgotten interview with the Talking Turkey Farm on School’s Greatest Mysteries: Bush Rambler Edition. Every Thanksgiving, turkeys die around the country. Honestly, has anyone ever asked what the turkey thinks of this food-based holiday? First, let’s go back to middle school history class. Don’t worry, I’ll make this nice and crisp…

Dramatic time travel noises

Back in the year of 1620, the English Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower seeking to find a home in North America. Roughly half of the Pilgrims died due to the harsh winter the following year. The Pilgrims were slowly starving to death, with grim success in farming crops. Okay, now scrolling into the future, to 1621 (one whole year!). Tisquantum, also known as Squanto, of the Patuxet tribe, taught the Pilgrims to farm corn, to fish, and to forage for berries. Also, sorry. This is taking longer than I thought, but don’t stop reading. Later that fall of 1621, Governor William Bradford invited 90 Patuxet natives to a feast with the different foods that Tisquantum taught them about. There you have it! It wasn’t originally called Thanksgiving, but now in modern days, it is! Great. Now let’s focus on the turkeys…

Dramatic time travel noises back to the present

Back to our meeting with The Thanksgiving Turkey. According to the transcript of our interview, Mr. T. Turkey kept repeatedly saying what appeared to be, “Oh, they’ll remember grandpappy forever…” These turkeys clearly aren’t as happy about our Thanksgiving holiday as we are. After all (not to make you not want to eat turkeys), many of them are killed each year for our holiday. The suffering of turkeys, chickens, cows, and porks, AKA pigs, is often unthought of when thinking about what we eat every day across the world. Mr. T. Turkey spends most of his day wandering around, drinking water and eating corn, before resorting back to his coop. Here’s our interview:

Abby: “So, Mr. T. Turkey, how do you feel about Thanksgiving?”

Mr. T.: “Ahhh! Don’t you mention that day!!!”

Camera cut. A big turkey wing comes up onto the camera. Static.

Many of our other turkey interviews also ended in a similar manner. The point is, apparently, turkeys don’t like Thanksgiving very much. They also don’t like major holidays. Or paprika, which is kind of random, but our reporters have said it. Except for this one turkey fellow…

Abby: “So, Mr. Turk, how do you feel about Thanksgiving?”

Mr. Turk E.: “I can tell you right now that many others of my kind believe that it is a wretched holiday, planned against us Meleagris gallopavo,* but I believe that it was a holiday to remember the important historical relationship between the Patuxet and the Pilgrims. Although their relationship didn’t exactly work out well, to put it in a turkey way.”

Abby: “Thanks so much for your thoughtful response! Most of our turkey interviewees just ran away!”

Mr. Turk E.: “Heh. That's why I took an 8th-grade history class on Native history! I read the whole second chapter of A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki! It was a banger. Bye now!” 

Well, there you have it! A Turkey’s Point of View on Thanksgiving, plus some extra details. Thanks for reading, and we’ll be back next month with more uncovered mysteries around campus with School’s Greatest Mysteries: Bush Rambler Edition.

*Meleagris gallopavo is the scientific name for domestic turkeys. I guess Mr. Turk E. was quite brainy about his species!