Almost  as if a sign of Thanksgiving next week… we saw this group of turkey enjoying the snow.   Do you know what a group of turkey is called?  I didn’t.  I thought flock.. or gaggle.  But upon further research, it’s a ‘rafter’.  Who knew?

Did you know that Ben Franklin wanted the turkey as the newly found United States official bird?  In a quote from a letter to his daughter he wrote:

“For my own part I wish the Eagle had not been chosen representative of our country.  His is a bird of bad moral character.  He does not get his living honestly.  You may have seen him perched on some dead tree near the river, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the Fishing Hawk; and when the diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

With all this injustice, he is never in good case but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy.  Besides he is a rank coward….

I am on this account not displeased that the figure is not known as an Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey.  For the truth, the Turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America… He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”