Still working on it. Not every political or institutional entity has one of everything.

Turkeys can startle the bejeezus out of you when they sneak up behind you while you are working on a ladder.

Domesticated turkeys are about as similar to wild turkeys as a poodle to a timber wolf. Wild turkey were hunted to extinction in New England by 1900 and were physically restored in the 1980s by live trapping birds from New York state and are now quite common, one of the few really good successful wildlife restoration efforts. They are very wary but sometimes are not; and contrary to many peoples’ belief are quite fond of roosting high in trees. They are decidedly not ‘dumb’ — hunting turkey requires a lot of skill and the ability to correctly call in the males at mating season, which is now.

Well, this post isn’t exactly serious either. Anyway, the original discussion by Corey gives the details on the Franklin letter. I have no idea if Franklin, who was overseas for all of this, was serious or not. Sounds to me like a possible case of skeptical skepticism.

Bald eagles routinely steal fish from osprey. Osprey are called fish eagles locally in some parts of the US. The African “fish eagle” is not merely referred to as a “fish eagle” but its official common name is “fish eagle” and it looks for all intense and purposes like an American Bald Eagle with a mullet. And by mullet, I meant he hairdo, not the fish. The ern, also sometimes called a fish eagle but more often a “sea eagle” probably links the old world Fish Eagle to the Bald Eagle in a sort of ring-species arrangement (the ern is in Greenland, etc.)

Yes, as far as I know, turkeys don’t really drown when it rains. Who knows. Maybe one did once.

* Ben Franklin wasn’t actually serious about the turkey as a national bird. He was being sarcastic, a trait for which he was renowned but which we somehow forget whenever the subject of national birds comes up. What’s more, he didn’t make the suggestion formally — he only mentioned it in a letter to his daughter six years after the bald eagle was adopted as the national bird. He wasn’t happy with the bald eagle, obviously, but likely only suggested the turkey as a parody of the whole thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Turkey#Benjamin_Franklin_and_the_US_national_bird

* Turkeys don’t drown in rainshowers because they look up and are too stupid to close their mouths. Even domestic ones have decent self-preservation instincts against drowning.
http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/turkey.asp

* It’s amusing to hear a bald eagle said to steal a fish from an osprey, which is subsequently described as a “fish eagle”, since although some people call the osprey a fish eagle, I hear that term more commonly applied to bald eagles and the rest of the Halieetus genus.

You’ve got to admit that an eagle is a more inspiring symbol than an animal that will drown if it happens to look up in a drizzle. And it’s rather appropriate for a people that were using guerrilla warfare tactics against the British. Plus, a bald eagle is a pretty badass looking bird.

So, maybe the lesson is that birds carrying fish weighing 20% of their body weight can’t fly that fast or fight back very well.

Chuck