WASHINGTON — Last month, Walter “Gator” Pelletier, the chairman of the National Turkey Federation and an executive at Butterball, the nation’s largest turkey producer, approached Wes Pike, his go-to bird handler, with the secret mission of raising two well-mannered birds that would not trash a room at the Willard Hotel or go ballistic on President Barack Obama when pardoned in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday.
Pike, 54, accepted the challenge. From Butterball pens in Goldsboro, N.C., he picked 22 15-week-old toms from a flock of 52,000 poults and moved them to a safe barn across the road. There, the four-pound birds were hand-fed a diet of 57 percent corn, 30 percent soy beans and a mix of grains and vitamins.
The birds walked on a fresh bed of kiln-dried pine shavings and gobbled, clucked and puttered freely with humans to better prepare them for the crowd of first-family members, administration officials and reporters attending Wednesday’s ceremony.
The bird chosen for the pardon Wednesday was named Courage. He performed well enough that back-up turkey, named Carolina, wasn’t needed.
Obama joked Wednesday about wanting to forgo the tradition and eat Courage.
“Thanks to the interventions of Malia and Sasha — because I was planning to eat this sucker — Courage will also be spared this terrible and delicious fate,” he said of his daughters.
After his remarks, the turkey was lifted to a table and Obama raised his hand over its head to deliver a mock-serious pardon.
“You are hereby pardoned,” he said.
President George H.W. Bush was the first to officially pardon a turkey.
Courage and Carolina also will be grand marshals riding a Thanksgiving Day float in Disneyland, so in addition to their pardoning prep, they listened to a constant loop of music provided by Disney, (“more New-Age Disney rock,” said Pike) to better acclimate them to the noises the lucky two will encounter.
The 40-pound broad-breasted white turkeys flew to Washington first class on a United aircraft (“United Turkey One,” said Mike Hyland, a Disney spokesman) and will live out their postpardon days in Frontierland’s Big Thunder Ranch. (With life spans lasting usually a few months, Butterball turkeys are bred for breast meat, not longevity.)
And to reduce the possibility of turkey lash-outs during the annual White House pardoning, Pike practiced lifting the birds onto and off tables, a maneuver that would amount to the life’s work of the chosen birds.
Pike conducted examinations (“confirmation and feathering”) to see which of the turkeys seemed most “presidential.” Sherrie Rosenblatt, communications director of the National Turkey Federation, said that Pike looked for the “most regal” birds.
“A turkey,” she said, “that knows when to strut and when to be calm, to gobble at all the right points.”
Pike selected the two standouts about five weeks ago. The 20 others, he said, crossed the road “back into the general population.”
Information from the Associated Press was included in this story.
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