Thanksgiving is over and Iowa’s celebrity turkeys Tailfeather and Wing-ding have received their pardons from the governor who proclaimed, “They are free to roam!” If it had been left up to Sen. Joni Ernst, the proclamation might have been less reassuring. As she reminded us in a video while strolling through a cemetery, “We’re all going to die!”
Any Iowa turkey who has been paying the least attention already understands this. The state has over 130 turkey farms, producing around 12 million turkeys annually. Only two of them get pardons. The rest get…well, you know. These are not good odds.
On a somewhat grander scale, Donald Trump officially pardoned Gobble and Waddle, two elegant and enormous turkeys from Wayne County, North Carolina. In the Rose Garden the president used the ceremony as an opportunity to complain that Joe Biden’s pardoning of his own turkeys, Peach and Blossom didn’t count because he used an Autopen and to anoint them with Trump’s personal brand of clemency. “And they will not be served for Thanksgiving dinner,” he declared, “We saved them in the nick of time.”
Departing from the light tone of the ceremony, Trump improvised, “We’re having murders, like, a lot of murders, on a weekly basis.” Which must have made both turkeys and humans a little nervous. You could tell Trump himself was uneasy to be that close to the two 50-pound birds. “Are they violent at all?” he asked, no doubt wondering if this whole thing was a bad idea. “Will they attack as I walk over?” Better call Kash Patel to run interference.
It’s not really clear what crime the turkeys might have committed and what they’ve done to deserve a pardon. Maybe somebody should look into the criminal histories of Gobble and Waddle. Has either of them been to Russia lately? And to what do they owe their freedom? Are they heavily invested in Trump’s crypto business? And now that they are free as a bird, what does life have in store for them?
Although it is said the pardoned turkeys get to live out their lives in luxury, you can be sure they won’t get daily spa treatments and pedicures now they’re out of the spotlight. The plump celebrities may turn to promoting body positivity telling other turkeys how they achieved success in their podcast, “Get Fat and Live Forever!”
Some pardoned turkeys could develop gambling addictions by imagining they were born blessed with good fortune and could not lose, only to end up at a bus stop in Poughkeepsie, scrawny and begging the local squirrels for a few acorns.
Knowing they are slow, can’t fly and are delicious, some pardoned turkeys may be forced to enter the witness protection program. “Gobble and Waddle? Who us? No, we’re, uh, Yucky and Lucky. We’re not famous and we taste terrible!”
But, sadly, other pardoned turkeys, trying to relive their glory days, may well return to hanging around the Rose Garden, hoping for another thumbs-up photo opportunity with the president and maybe a stale lemon cookie crumb leftover from Veteran’s Day.