COURAGE AND Carolina are two lucky birds, from a flock of 52,000.
Had Walter Pelletier, the chairman of the National Turkey Federation, not been impressed by the turkeys’ white plumage, regal calm and melodic gobble, the avians would have ended up on dining room tables today.
Courage was named in homage to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, though one wonders whether soldiers like being remembered by a turkey.
Just before noon yesterday, the bird waited patiently under the White House portico for President Barack Obama to emerge with his daughters Malia and Sasha.
“I was planning to eat this sucker,” Obama said, pretending that his daughters’ pleas made him relent.
Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday, Obama reminded the audience, during the “darkest times” of the civil war.
“There’s no question that it has been a tough year for America,” he said, calling his compatriots “a people of endless compassion, boundless ingenuity, limitless strength”.
Levity and seriousness alternated on the eve of what the president called “this quintessentially American holiday”.
There are days that remind him why he wanted to be president, Obama said.
“Then there are moments like this – where I pardon a turkey and send it to Disneyland.”
The birds were to be flown first class to Disneyland, California, to lead the Thanksgiving Day parade there.
Malia grinned. Sasha shyly studied the toes of her Converse sneakers and observed: “It looks like a big chicken.”
Pelletier hoisted Courage on to a table.
“Is there an official gesture?” Obama asked, raising his hand and saying, “I hereby pardon Courage so that he can live out the rest of his days in peace and tranquillity.”
The Washington Post published a half-page account of the journey of Courage and his alternate, Carolina, from the turkey farm in North Carolina.
Pelletier drove them in the back of his van to the Willard Hotel near the White House.
A secret service agent leaned through the window.
“Y’all got the pardoned turkeys back there?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll eat ’em.” The turkeys spent Tuesday night in a deluxe room where pine shavings were placed on plastic sheeting over the carpet.
“Honey, you’re at the Willard,” the Turkey Federation’s communications director whispered to Courage.
“It doesn’t get much better.”
Turkey growers have given the US president a Thanksgiving turkey every year since 1947.
Historians dispute whether Lincoln, Truman or Kennedy was the first to pardon a turkey.
The first president Bush made it official practice in 1989.