FEATURES:
- Runs almost as fast as Usain Bolt, albeit in bursts
- Flies faster than most hummingbirds, albeit in bursts
- Gobbles, purrs, yelps, chirps, clicks, and kee-kees
It is a truth, if not universally acknowledged then at least generally believed, that Ben Franklin put forth the turkey as our national bird. This is not true. He did criticize the eagle on a draft of the Great Seal as looking rather like a turkey, and in so doing he did call the turkey, however un-seal-worthy, “a much more respectable Bird” than an eagle. Eagles, he said, did not make their livings honestly, being too lazy to fish for themselves. A turkey, in contrast, besides being “a true original native of America,” was, by his lights, “though a little vain and silly,” still “a bird of courage.”


