One Flew Over the Turkey Nest

I suspected it might happen. By mentioning cat-sacrificing at Halloween and turkey-eating at Thanksgiving, I have incurred the wrath of animal activists within my readership zone.

They have gotten up off their knees, where they have been praying for wounded sperm whales and the souls of dead dogs, long enough to telephone and call me names.

One of them, who said she was a member of Compassion for Animals, asked angrily how would I like to have my head cut off and be served, roasted and stuffed, for dinner today?

I had to reply I would not like that at all.

“I knew it!” she said triumphantly, and hung up.

The column that got them riled made only passing reference to the fate of turkeys on Thanksgiving and to the ritual of sacrificing cats on Halloween.

My main concern in the essay was for the human wreckage on Skid Row and all those others who drift through life without hope of moral redemption.

The animal activists who called didn’t even mention them. Let the fools shuffle by as best they can, I guess, but please, God, save the turkey.

I am not a cruel person. I do not advocate the random killing and eating of rhinos and bald eagles, of which there are too few in the world, and you will not find me slaughtering elephants on the Masai Mara.

But we are, after all, omnivorous creatures, and as such will eat anything that doesn’t eat us first. The turkey, alas, falls into a category of delicacies consumed with impunity.

On that subject, one animal activist who telephoned called my attention to a letter that appeared in The Times several years ago.

The letter challenged the term “Turkey Day” and suggested that since we do not eat our mothers on Mother’s Day, why do we eat turkeys on Turkey Day?

We should honor the bird, it concluded, instead of “twisting off the dead animals’s neck and breaking its bones while swallowing pieces of the corpse.”

Powerful stuff.

The caller was particularly concerned about the care and treatment of turkeys before their deaths. If we insist on eating them, shouldn’t we at least provide adequate housing during their short and anguished lives?

Turkeys, the caller said, lived in “cramped wire cages” and had their beaks ripped off to avoid pecking each other “in the often cannibalistic panic brought on by their crowded living conditions.”

I learned later he was getting his information from a press release issued by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an organization whose members wear T-shirts that say, “I don’t eat my friends.”

Each to his own epiphany.

“Turkeys live a lousy life,” the caller said, his voice rising, “and you’re a part of their torture!”

Click.

After a day of harassment by angry people, I telephoned the National Turkey Federation in Virginia to ask if the cruelty charges were true.

“Nonsense,” said Eddie Aldrete, director of public affairs for the federation.

“Turkeys are not raised in ‘cramped wire cages’ but in expensive, scientifically designed, environmentally controlled buildings as big as football fields.”

He made it sound like a Club Med for turkeys.

Eddie went on to say that a turkey requires only 2.7 square feet of living space to be happy but is given 4 square feet.

“That’s more than the Japanese get on their little islands,” I said jokingly, but Eddie is not one to joke about turkeys.

Later he would point out that his license plate reads EAT TRKY and his boss’ plate reads GOBBLE.

“What about the charge that you rip off their beaks in a cruel and unusual manner?” I asked.

Eddie sighed. One could almost see him shaking his head, weary of answering the same old accusations.

“You clip your toenails, right?” Eddie asked. “Well, each turkey gets the top of his beak clipped once in its lifetime. The process is about as painful as manicuring your toenails.”

That is done out of compassion, he said, so that the little darlings don’t hurt each other.

Eddie added: “Turkeys are happy and well-treated. We do not thrive on tortured birds. Stressed turkeys produce tough meat.”

Now you’ve heard both sides. If you are inclined to eat turkey today, eat it knowing its last days were spent in a kind of Grand Turkey Hyatt, with wine and laughter.

If you don’t believe that, eat tofu, as Eddie said, and bean sprouts. I respect your right to dine as you like. Please respect mine.

We’re having dolphin.