Trixie – the only turkey looking forward to Christmas!

Every year the United States’ President ‘pardons’ a turkey at Thanksgiving, sparing the bird from slaughter. In Ireland, it’s rare that turkeys earn a reprieve at Christmas but one Galway turkey could more appropriately be described as a ‘Lucky Duck’ . . . or a blessed bird, who has escaped having her feathers ruffled or wings clipped this festive season.

Trixie the turkey was destined for the dinner table of St Mary’s nursing home, Shantalla Road in the city; she was supposed to be the centrepiece of the Christmas Day feast for residents and staff.

But fate – rather than the President – and a broken wing intervened and saved Trixie from the Christmas chop.  The reason for the reprieve is because Trixie was put on a course of antibiotics . . . and turkeys on meds, apparently, cannot be eaten.

So Trixie, who is now officially the luckiest turkey in all of Galway and possibly the World, has become a household pet at the nursing home instead and is now the residents’ new favourite feathered friend, joining a rooster and two hens who are already living there. 

Trixie, explained St Mary’s Director of Nursing, Yvonne Carpenter, was a gift from a farmer out in Boleybeg in Barna. She was seven months old and weighed about six kilos.   

“She was the runt of the litter! The plan was to eat her; she was for the dinner table. But she stopped eating all of a sudden, and we said there’s something wrong with her. If she didn’t eat, she wouldn’t be fat enough to feed ten Christmas dinners never mind all of us, so we decided to bring her to the vet.

“The vet thought we were joking. We were in and there were people with dogs and other pets – they couldn’t believe that we came in with a turkey this close to Christmas,” laughs Yvonne.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.