Revenge of the Turkey

Revenge of the Turkey

Destination America’s ‘When Turkeys Attack’ should arouse strange new respect for your Thanksgiving bird.

Nancy deWolf Smith in the Wall Street Journal

When Turkeys Attack

Wednesday 10 p.m. Destination America

Watch “When Turkeys Attack” and you will never look at your holiday bird the same way again. That’s probably a good thing. According to some experts on Destination America’s compendium of filmed attacks on humans, the 44 million turkeys we eat every year are crafty predators who could be as lethal as velociraptors if they were bigger. And now they’re getting more aggressive, says southern breeder Lane “Weasel” Wilkins : “We came over on the Mayflower and we started eatin’ these turkeys” and now they’re saying, “We’ve had enough.”

One lesson here: Turkeys by nature look for the weak, so if one comes at you don’t turn and run, because they can run 20 miles an hour, and you can’t. The other lesson may be the one brought home so strongly in Alfred Hitchcock ’s “The Birds.” So eat those turkeys if you will, enjoy them if you can. But watch out for them in your dreams Thursday night.