Where Do The Turkeys Go?

Ah, the joys of Thanksgiving, you get to spend the day with your family, it kicks of the holiday season and you get to eat some of the most delicious foods in the world, like mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli casserole, and the most importantly...turkey! We all know that turkey is the star for mostly every dinner table on Thanksgiving Day in America, but there is one turkey every year that misses cleaver. Each year a pardon is giving to this fortuitous foul by the President of the United States, which means he is sure not to end up on someone's holiday table packed with stuffing, but do you know what happens to these fortunate ones?

The pardoned turkeys are whisked away and treated like royalty. Before 2005, pardoned turkeys were taken to, ironically enough, to a place in Virginia called Frying Pan Park, were they would spend the rest of their days, well...alive. The pardoned birds of 2005, Marshmallow and Yam, were the first birds to arrive at their new retirement home, Disneyland. There is a little bit of a controversy over how the new location came to be. One account is that President Bush, recognizing the irony, said that the birds "were a little skeptical about going to a place called Frying Pan Park." The other account is that someone at a Disney staff meeting suggested "Doesn't that make him (the turkey) the happiest turkey on earth? We should bring him to the happiest place on earth."

The turkeys live a great life at the two Disney parks. Marshmallow and Yam are still at Disneyland, while last year's birds, May and Flower can be seen at Disney World. The birds do play an important role before they retire to Disney, though, as they are the grand marshals of the Thanksgiving Day parade.