A Story by Gerry Steinmetz, OFM, A Franciscan Storyteller

When I was growing up on a farm in southern Indiana, each March, my Mom would buy around 100 baby turkeys. In the summer, they were put out on the hillsides and kept in pens at night to protect them from predator animals. In the morning, the gate was opened and they all ran out to the fields. The hens with heads down to the ground sought to capture grasshoppers or whatever bugs they might find on the ground. The male ‘gobblers’ however, puffed out their feathers and proudly opened their tail feathers and ‘gobbled’ trying to catch the attention of the hens. The ‘gobblers’ showed their proud, inflated bodies and called attention to themselves only. But the hens could have cared less and were only interested in satisfying their hunger, only focused on one thing. When I came home from school in September, Mom would tell me to get the turkeys back to their pen to be locked down for the night. They had travelled a long way and could only be found by the sound of the gobbling males.

Trying to herd them back was like herding cats. The hens with heads down were not interested in going back into the lockdown and neither were the gobblers. It usually took an hour or more to get them back into lockdown. Then in November, Mom took orders for turkeys for Thanksgiving. We all had to prepare them for families and things got very hectic the week of Thanksgiving. The turkeys were cleaned and ready to be weighed and the sale was made. Mom made money for the family of 8 to live on and pay bills which was the goal of her project. Then on Thanksgiving Day, our cousins came from Cincinnati to share Thanksgiving together.

The men went rabbit hunting while the women prepared the meal. Homegrown pumpkins made the pies and a large ‘Tom’ Turkey was filled with Mom’s special dressing. This story reminds me of what we are going through now. No one wants to come back into the pen (lockdown). Like the hens, we have our heads to the ground looking only to satisfy our immediate needs. And there are the ‘gobblers’ who are strutting around, puffed up and calling attention only to themselves. But in the end, let us not FORGET the TURKEY who Sacrifices their life that we can enjoy a special treat: Turkey. Before WE GOBBLE down our TURKEY, can we give THANKS TO THE TURKEY, and remember all we can learn from these wonderful animals?