Where are they now

On November 21, 2022, his 80th birthday, President Joe Biden pardoned two turkeys, Chocolate and Chip, otherwise destined for someone’s Thanksgiving table. Fox News posted that “the National Turkey Federation has donated turkeys to the president ahead of Thanksgiving since 1947 under President Harry Truman. President John F. Kennedy is believed to be the first president to spare the turkey, and President George H. W. Bush was the first to formalize the ‘pardon’ tradition.”

The National Turkey Federation. Who knew that turkeys had an association? And how do they decide which two members will be granted clemency? This sounds like a perverse mashup of “Animal Farm” and “The Lottery.”

All those turkeys that over the years were saved from Aunt Muriel’s stuffing and Uncle Mo’s electric carving knife, where are they now? Let’s see…

Biscuits, a tom pardoned in 2004 with his partner Gravy, is a counselor for other turkeys whose sentences were commuted. “This is no small trauma,” said Biscuits, “Your whole life you’re headed in one direction and, suddenly, out of the blue, you’re spun around like a top and you’re at the White House! It really shakes your wattle.”

Biscuits took up Buddhism after his near-death experience. He finds it fulfilling to help other turkey survivors adjust, “but,” he said,”let’s talk turkey. With only two pardoned each year, it’s not much of a business. And some of those birds seek anonymity because they feel guilty for having such fortunate karma.”

The 2014 pardonees Mac and Cheese created the first turkey-owned and -operated farmed turkey refuge. Mac said it is supported by the award from their successful defamation suit against Kraft and other makers of the eponymous — and insanely popular — “so-called dinners” in a box.

The Mac and Cheese refuge, nestled in the rolling foothills of Kansas, has had its challenges. Cheese described a recent influx of Anatolian immigrants looking for work; fowl security got the humans onto a bus that took them to a Perdue processing plant in Iowa.

According to Reader’s Digest, First Lady Patricia Nixon “sent a bird to a children’s farm in 1973.” Following up, we learned that the turkey fomented a free-range uprising among the children — demanding more spacious pens and access to the outdoors — and then went missing. The children’s farm manager claimed it had escaped. “I got eleven acres of kids here. The turkey was sent to us by mistake, and, I dunno, musta flown away,” he said. (Yeah, right!)

Side-stepping that huge green deep-fryer that has been taking up way too much space on the back porch for way too long, Jelly, another pardoned turkey, opened the talent agency “Bang the Drumstick” with her partner Peanut Butter. She said that a turkey should make hay from a personal encounter with the leader of the free world. “I mean, how often does that happen?” she said.

Jelly told of Charlie, pardoned by President Ronald Reagan and sent to a petting zoo. He signed up with Bang the Drumstick and became an in-demand model for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade giant turkey balloon. “It wasn’t easy standing still for that long,” said Charlie, “but the residuals keep me in top-shelf bird feed.”

As Biscuits put it, saving two turkeys a year isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, “but,” he said, “you have to start somewhere.” He added, “If we can heighten awareness one president and two turkeys at a time, maybe something good will happen.” (Most likely, what’ll happen will be a delicious Thanksgiving feast, eh?!)

Happy Thanksgiving!