Riding the Gravy Train

In a Thanksgiving Tradition, One Small Turkey Serves an Entire Nation

They got the wrong bird, frankly.

It was clear from the beginning. He didn't fit the profile. Thirty-six pounds (on the light side, at least compared with previous convicts), and with more spunk than the usual tom you'd see heading for the Thanksgiving table.

But that didn't stop the charade.

He was a doomed prisoner when they marched him into the Rose Garden yesterday, though he strutted around like he owned the place. Denial, perhaps, is the best defense for a Broad Breasted White.

He was not represented by counsel, and as for any interrogation techniques, usual or alternative, he wasn't squawking. The charges were never stated, but the 43rd president pardoned the 59th national turkey anyway, carrying on a tradition of forgiveness and redemption through the symbolic plucking of one bird from the threat of the carving knife.

The ritual was begun by the National Turkey Federation with the complicity of Harry Truman, presumably to help Americans feel okay about consuming millions of other roasted birds the next day. But as with many things in life, guilt and absolution are not always pure.

Flyer, as the bird was dubbed by a vote on the White House Web site, was actually never destined for the holiday table. Turkey types standing in the wings acknowledged as much; the national bird and his understudy, Fryer ("Probably better to be called Flyer than Fryer" was the president's obligatory quip), would more likely have ended up as loaves of honey mesquite or turkey pastrami lunch meat if they hadn't been singled out from their flock not long after they were hatched.

Raised on the Nutt family farm in Monett, Mo., the birds were selected for their adaptability and sociability early on, becoming members of a "cell" that Willow Brook Foods began cultivating for this occasion. Flyer and Fryer were culled earlier this week as the most presentable suspects.

So when the president stepped into the Rose Garden at 10:35 yesterday morning to face the bird and issue his proclamation, Lynn Nutt wrestled Flyer to a felt-covered table, feathers flying from the big-breasted bird. There was a short struggle before Nutt got him in a wing lock, and after a pat, pat, pat and a few strokes of his feathers, President Bush invited a gaggle of Brownies and Girl Scouts to take a gander, and then slipped out.

There was very little, actually, to pardon the bird for, according to his hosts at the Hotel Washington, where he spent the night after motoring into town in the back of Nutt's Chevy pickup.

More unruly were Biscuits and Gravy, the national bird and his understudy from two years ago. (The National Turkey Federation brings two birds to town for the pardoning, in case one is uncooperative or under the weather.) That year, both were particularly rambunctious, running up and down a penthouse hallway at the hotel before being corraled into a kitchen, according to Abel Anane, food and beverage director there.

Had they been less distinguished fowl, he might have offered alternative accommodations: the oven. (His staff was putting 15 turkeys in to bake yesterday as the White House ceremony was getting underway.)

But in the end, justice is served. And the birds won't be.

And their trials are ending in typical American fashion: Two first-class tickets to LAX, and places of honor in a Thanksgiving Day parade. Then retirement, at Disneyland.