Many years ago, a very funny man, Stan Freburgh, did a comedy recording about US history. One of the skits was about the first Thanksgiving. The leader discovers that the cook stuffed a turkey and was roasting it for the feast. The leader says something like "You cooked the national bird? What are we going to do now?" So they quickly decided to make the Eagle the national bird.Jordan
--- On Wed, 1/26/11, Patti Haynes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Patti Haynes <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [VTBIRD] Eagle or Turkey?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 11:33 AM
On this day in 1784, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter saying
that he was not pleased about the choice of Bald Eagle as the symbol of
America. He wished it had not been chosen as a 'representative of our
country' because, he said, it is a 'Bird of bad moral Character.' Franklin
wrote about the eagle: 'Like those among Men who live by Sharping and
Robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy.'
There was a different fowl that Franklin championed as a true representative
of the budding United States: 'The Turkey', he wrote 227 years ago today,
'is a much more respectable bird, and...a true original Native of America.'
From the Writer's Almanac for January 26, 2011
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