Thursday, November 27, 2008

HI-HO TURKEYS!


To get the full impact of what I am printing below (which incidentally is from one of the best of the blog writers in the whole of the Inland Empire), you really should go back and reread my October 23 blog. If you've been following HOT COFFEE & COOL JAZZ, you'll know that on that day I provided a blow by blow description of the anatomy of chickens and the production of an egg. Now you already may have known about how Henny Penny got here, but being a city girl, the anatomy of fowls simply had not been part of my education, and because what a Google search produced was so very fascinating I just had to share it with you on that day back in October.

Now, thanks to David Allen, columnist and blogger for the Inland Daily Bulletin, I can add a new bit of information to my burgeoning cache of feathery trivia. Read this and laugh with me:

WHEN TURKEYS SADDLED UP

By David Allen on November 27, 2008 4:54 AM

On Tuesday, Betty Peters, the peripatetic history buff and Pomona Public Library volunteer, visited our office to show off a curiosity she'd found. She laid an old, lightly stained, brown piece of cloth, about the size and shape of a bib, or a diaper, on our counter and asked if I knew what it was.

I eyed it warily and said I didn't.

"It was a saddle for turkeys," Peters said. She explained that when she was growing up, her family had a small ranch in Pomona, which included turkeys. To help the tom turkeys inseminate the ladies, this cloth saddle was placed on a female's back. The tom could dig his feet into the seams and not slip from her back until his business was concluded.

"If anyone ever asks you 'Why do turkeys need saddles?,' now you know!" Peters crowed.

Chew on that while you're chewing on a turkey today. Happy Thanksgiving.


So THERE! Now you know something else.

And Happy Thanksgiving to both David and all you who follow my own blog!

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