The Secret Life of the American Turkey
If you grew up in small-town America, a wild turkey most likely ran amok in your community. Proud, belligerent, and uncatchable, you’d giggle at the turkey dashing in-between traffic or scampering across some neighbor’s yard; you might have even chased it, though you never caught it. With a neck that looks like a pair of testes and a voluminous midsection, the turkey is a potent representation of American might. Kevin was one such turkey.
In 2017, Kevin captured the heart of Wethersfield, CT, of the oldest communities in the United States. He was known to roam around Main Street, walking up to people’s windows, panhandling for food, and posing for photos. He occasionally used crosswalks but was more likely to block traffic.
“To be honest he’s like a pseudo Mayor, mascot, life of the party of Old Wethersfield,” said local resident Deborah Hammer. On Saturday mornings, lines formed outside of the local general store to buy Kevin the Turkey merchandise, including “Team Kevin” shirts, mugs, calendars, and Kevin-branded onesies for babies. There was even a campaign to elect him mayor. (He ended up receiving 65 votes in the town’s election.)
While even Connecticut Senator Christopher S. Murray said that Kevin “truly does bring the whole town together,” the boy’s constant, annoying presence was deemed too much of a nuisance by the police. They relocated Kevin to a wildlife sanctuary upstate (at the time of this writing, my FOIA request to determine if this was a euphemism or not remains unanswered). Kevin’s saga was memorialized in an oil painting by local artist John Salling that hangs at a pizzeria on Main Street. “We really miss Kevin down here,” Salling says.
A painting of Kevin the Turkey done by artist John Salling. Source: Hartford Courant
Believe it or not, Kevin is just one of many who have gripped the attention of towns in the US. In the fall of 2022, the city of Woburn, MA fell under siege from a gang of five turkeys, who were led by a male turkey also named Kevin. Kevin and his four female associates terrorized locals for weeks, swarming them in public and waiting at the doors of their homes. Some residents refused to leave their houses or retrieve packages while the turkeys were around. Meanwhile, in the nearby city of Amesbury, there’s a Facebook fan club for yet another turkey named Kevin, who is apparently “the king of screwing up traffic on Whitehall Road.”
Even if your city hasn’t been accosted by a wild turkey named Kevin (yet), you’re more likely than ever to encounter the birds if you live in the states—after reaching a low in the 1930s of just 30,000 individuals, the US turkey population has since exploded to over 6.5 million turkeys, with turkeys inhabiting every state but Alaska.
The sagas of the Kevins inspired me to peer deeper into the lives of the birds that have embedded themselves in the fabric of North American life since time immemorial. Did the Aztecs worship a turkey god? Did Benjamin Franklin actually want the turkey to be the national bird of the US? And how did the American turkey annoy dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan enough for him to change his own country’s official name?
This is the secret life of the American turkey.
Turkey Life
The humble turkey that we know and love today is one of two extant species: the well-known Meleagris gallopavo, represented by both the North American wild turkey and the domestic turkey, and Meleagris ocellata, the smaller, rarer variety that originated in the forests of the Yucatán Peninsula. Turkeys first appeared in North America approximately 20 million years ago, evolving from a common ancestor of pheasants and grouse.
Historically, turkeys ranged the whole of North America, but by the early 1900s, populations had plummeted due to deforestation and overhunting. Over the the last hundred years, due to successful restoration policies, turkeys have reclaimed much of their original territory, ranging today from southern Mexico to southeastern Canada. Turkeys can live in any habitat with a mix of clearing and dense plant coverage, although they prefer forests, as they like to nest in trees. They are also, of course, slowly invading suburban communities.
A turkey diorama at the Milwaukee Public Museum, representing a male (left) and a female (right).
Despite being considered flightless birds, turkeys can actually fly for short distances at speeds up to 55 mph. While grounded, they can run at roughly 25 mph—slightly slower than Usain Bolt.
Male turkeys, called “toms,” are larger than female turkeys, called “hens,” growing up to 37 lbs, which makes them the second-largest North American bird behind the trumpeter swan. Male turkeys have brighter feathers than female turkeys, which they use to attract mates by puffing out and strutting around, making them the peacocks of North America.
The anatomical structure of a turkey is arguably among the most humorously named of any animal. The fleshy nodules that surround its head and throat are called “caruncles.” The erectile appendage that dangles from its forehead is known as a “snood.” And the dangly bag of skin that hangs off its neck is called a “wattle.” These appendages signify excitement in male turkeys, becoming engorged with blood. Depending on their level of excitement, their heads can change colors, swinging between red, white, and blue, emblematic of their intense patriotism.
Turkeys can communicate through a wide variety of vocalizations. Everyone is familiar with the gobble, which can be used to attract a mate, but turkeys make a plethora of calls, yelps, purrs, clucks, drums, and spits thanks to an air sac in their chest. Some of their calls can be heard up to a mile away.
Turkeys are polygamous, mating with different partners throughout the spring season. Male turkeys will actually participate in courtship as a group, with lower males on the pecking order (a literal construct within their culture) serving as proud wingmen to the more dominant male. These groups of males will then skirmish, with the winners claiming the females. After mating, the hens will lay around a dozen eggs in a shallow dirt nest and incubate them for 28 days.
Interestingly, turkeys have been observed developing positive social relationships with other animals. In one BBC documentary, Turkeys were observed foraging alongside deer and squirrels, even engaging in play together. Each species helped the others watch for predators: the deer employing their heightened sense of smell, the turkey using its superior sight, and squirrels providing aerial reconnaissance from the treetops.
The History of Human-Turkey Relations
Turkeys and humans have had a long and symbiotic relationship that would put anything the writers of Friends could come up with to shame. These birds have been a fixture in the diets and the mythology of those who inhabit North America. It is suggested that one of the reasons Native Americans along the East Coast conducted controlled burns of the forest was specifically because the meadowlands would attract more turkeys and make them easier to hunt.
Turkeys were first domesticated 2000 years ago in central Mexico. They were one of the only domesticated animals of the Mayan civilization. The Aztecs, who called them huexolotlin, associated turkeys with their trickster god Tēzcatlipōca. Tēzcatlipōca, also known as “Chalchiuhtotolin” when he took the form of a turkey, was one of the primary gods of the Aztecs and the brother to the famed serpent god Quetzalcoatl.
Tēzcatlipōca taking the form of a turkey, as depicted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, one of the oldest examples of Aztec manuscript painting.
In Aztec mythology, Tēzcatlipōca played a central role in the creation of the world, being one of four sons of the creator god Ometeotl—each representing a cardinal direction, Tēzcatlipōca being of the west—who created the universe by transforming into giant serpents and destroying the great sea monster Cipactli, whose dismembered remains were subsequently transformed into different parts of the world. The creation of the universe was followed by the five different ages of the Sun, with Tēzcatlipōca creating the First Sun by leaping into a fire; we live in the age of the Fifth Sun and Moon, according to the Aztecs. Tēzcatlipōca is also associated with music, warriors, and the creation of dogs, among many other things.
Due to this association, the Aztecs prized their turkeys, breeding them for their feathers, meat and use in religious rituals. It is estimated that by the time Hernán Cortés arrived in Tenochtitlán in 1519, the royal household of King Montezuma II consumed 1,000 turkeys a day. Cortés and his crew were given around 1,500 turkeys as a gift by the Aztecs and brought them back to Spain. The birds subsequently spread across much of the globe as a popular domestic poultry.
Were Turkeys Served at the First Thanksgiving?
Americans will recognize the turkey as the centerpiece of the holiday of Thanksgiving. But was the bird actually a part of the original Thanksgiving feast? The first Thanksgiving took place in November of 1621, just over 400 years ago. Colonists from the Plymouth colony in modern-day Massachusetts together with members of the Wampanoag community held a harvest banquet which lasted for three days.
In the only semi-contemporary summaries of the event, colonist Edward Winslow and Governor William Bradford recounted that the colonists served a great many “fowl” in addition to a variety of deer, fish, and vegetables. The Wampanoag brought five deer to serve, making venison likely the most prevalent meat served at the feast, but at that time wild turkey was still plentiful in New England and was almost certainly among the birds harvested for the feast.
Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday in the United States in 1863 by President Lincoln. One month later, he informally began the tradition of pardoning turkeys that modern American presidents continue. A turkey that was originally intended to be Christmas Dinner at the White House was adopted by the President’s son and named Jack. President Lincoln duly notified the White House kitchen staff that the turkey was to be “pardoned.”
A statue of Jack the Pardoned Turkey in Hartford, CT. Source: Gastro Obscura
Symbol of a Nation
It has long been rumored that Ben Franklin campaigned for the national bird of the United States to be the turkey rather than the bald eagle. The eagle first appeared as the national symbol on the Great Seal of the United States, which was created in June of 1782 by the then Secretary of the Continental Congress Charles Thomson. This was actually the third attempt to create a seal for the US, the first two containing no birds at all. The version of the seal proposed by Ben Franklin contained biblical and mythological scenes, not a turkey.
The rumor about Franklin’s preference for the turkey comes from a letter to his daughter written two years later. Within the letter he included a joke about the bald eagle being a “rank coward” who “does not get his Living honestly…too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish…the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him…like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor and often very lousy,” whereas the “turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird…a bird of courage” who would not hesitate to “attack a grenadier of the British guards who should presume to invade his farmyard with a red coat on.”
Turkey vs. Türkiye
The name for the bird in English, believe it or not, actually comes from the nation of Turkey. North American Turkeys look quite similar to a species of guinea fowl that had been imported into Europe from the Middle East by the fledgling Ottoman Empire. This led the English to refer to them as “turkey birds,” later shortened to just turkeys.
However in December of 2021, in order to discourage association with the North American bird, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a declaration changing the official name of the country to Türkiye. Turkey’s English-language state broadcaster TRT World explained the decision by saying “Googling ‘Turkey’ brings up a a muddled set of images, articles, and dictionary definitions that conflate the country with Meleagris – otherwise known as the turkey, a large bird native to North America – which is famous for being served on Christmas menus or Thanksgiving dinners.” The network continued: “Flip through the Cambridge Dictionary and ‘turkey’ is defined as ‘something that fails badly’ or ‘a stupid or silly person.’”
Interestingly enough, in Turkish, turkeys are actually referred to as “India birds” because of their similarities to Indian peacocks (and in Hindi they are called “Peru birds”).
The Reign of the Turkey
Today, wild turkeys continue to make a comeback across North America. Whether a Kevin takes up residence in your town or you simply enjoy them on Thanksgiving, we hope that your knowledge of this proud, noble, and slightly annoying bird has been enhanced.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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