Thanksgiving is upon us and many Americans are looking forward to spending time with friends and family gorging themselves on a turkey dinner. For people with meleagrisphobia though, this time of year has a whole different connotation. Meleagrisphobia, is the extreme fear of turkeys. In, The Nine, the main character, Gabe, inadvertently reveals he has this fear when he and his partner Alex land smack dab in the middle of a turkey farm.
Turkey Horror Gobble
Audiobook Excerpt from The Nine
5 Turkey Facts to Wow Your Friends and Family this Thanksgiving
1. Turkeys are fast movers. They can fly up to 55 mph, run up to 25mph and they can also swim. If you’re going to attempt an escape, think James Bond’s Aston Martin.
2. Their vision is three times better than 20/20 with their peripheral vision at about 270 degrees (humans are around 180) and the can see UVA light, helping them identify prey, mates and food. Imagine a bird wearing military grade goggles hunting you in the dark.
3. A group of wild turkeys is called a rafter and a baby turkey is called a poult. A barn full of turkeys packed together like sardines around your ankles is called a nightmare.
4. Only the male turkeys gobble. Females, make a clicking sound. It is a sonar-based targeting system used for wattle attacks.
5. No surprise, but turkeys have lots of predators. What may surprise you is they sleep in trees at night to stay safe from those predators. They can also ambush unwary strollers too uneducated to know there is a twenty-five-pound feathered poop bomb primed to reach terminal velocity at any moment.
Happy thanksgiving and give Ham a chance. It’s the other holiday treat with fewer feathers.
