Trixie – the only turkey looking forward to Christmas

Galway’s favourite turkey, Trixie is as ‘happy as Larry’ again this Christmas!

Because not only will the luckiest turkey in the land survive a record fourth successive Christmas, she’s got new friends to spend time with on Christmas Day – two alpacas, named Happy and Larry.

Trixie was destined for the dinner table of St Mary’s nursing home, in Shantalla in the city at Christmas 2013. But fate and a broken wing intervened to save Trixie from the Christmas chop – she was put on a course of antibiotics . . . and turkeys on medication cannot be eaten.

The residents became so attached to Trixie, they voted not to eat her the following two Christmases either.

And now, Trixie, aged four, is one of the oldest turkeys in the land that was bred for the Christmas market.

The secret to her longevity, apart from good luck and the goodwill of her fellow residents at St Mary’s?

“A bowl of Alpen every morning, and a good walk every day,” said Yvonne Carpenter, St. Mary’s Director of Nursing.

Though she has survived the oven over successive Christmases, Trixie almost got gobbled up by a fearsome fox that lurks around Shantalla.

To mark her fourth birthday earlier this year, St Mary’s purchased two alpacas from a Ballinalsoe farm.

Happy and Larry – named following a competition run by Colm’s Pharmacy in Salthill Village – act as bodyguards for Trixie and his feathered friends, Snow White, the goose, and three red hens.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.