Saving Fairfield County's Turkeys

Two turkeys in Fairfield's Southport neighborhood won't be on a carving block this Thanksgiving. Instead, Mordecai and Fiona will have Thanksgiving dinner served to them.

Joan Poster, a veterinarian who adopted the Bourbon Red turkeys from Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, N.Y., said Mordecai and Fiona will feast on stuffed squash and wild rice, while she and her husband, Dennis, enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner of vegetables.

Farm Sanctuary dropped the turkeys off at Poster's home around 1 p.m. about a week ago, and Mordecai, a male, became acclimated to his new digs pretty quickly - within minutes, he was strutting around a fenced-in enclosure with his tail feathers splayed and his beak pecking at some of Poster's chickens. Fiona, a female, wasn't as aggressive.

Poster, a vegan who has about 200 rescue animals on her property, including four Clydesdale horses, two donkeys, two cows and an 875-pound pig named Wilbur, said it's a shame turkeys are the entree-of-choice for millions of Americans on Thanksgiving.

"They're wonderful, wonderful birds, really nice," she said. "To me, every animal, every person, has a right to live. I think it's horrible people eat them."

Tara Oresick, Farm Sanctuary's New York shelter manager, drove about five hours from Watkins Glen, N.Y. to deliver Mordecai and Fiona to Poster and said this year marked Farm Sanctuary's 24th annual "Turkey Express." She said Farm Sanctuary, over the past 24 years, has rescued more than 1,000 turkeys and found homes for about 600 of them.

"Our celebration of the turkeys is an annual event," Oresick said, adding that visitors to the Watkins Glen farm get to see turkeys in their natural environment and that turkeys feast on pumpkin pie, squash and cranberries on Thanksgiving.

"It's really hard to come face-to-face with a turkey and not see the intelligence and that they have emotions," Oresick said. "We have over 20 turkeys right now at our Watkins Glen shelter, and they're all different. They have very clear personalities."

Poster, owner of Poster Animal Hospital in Westport, said all of her animals, which also include sheep, goats, more pigs, ducks, rabbits, peacocks, deer and guinea pigs, have their own personalities and that pigs, in particular, are smart and seem almost human in her eyes. "You look in their eyes, it's like looking at a person," she said.

Mordecai and Fiona, who were born last spring, weren't due to be killed if Poster or another person didn't adopt them. But finding a home for the Bourbon Reds enabled Farm Sanctuary to provide more room for rescued animals, Oresick said. She said Farm Sanctuary's New York shelter has about 500 animals and focuses on caring for "factory-farmed animals" that are viewed as commodities, such as turkeys, laying chickens, broiler chickens, cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits, ducks and geese.

Oresick said turkeys are "sentient beings" and "deserve better than what we do as a general rule."

Oresick said most people probably think the turkey on their Thanksgiving Day table was running around in the wild before it was killed. But she said that wasn't the case at all. She said domestic turkeys are often de-beaked and de-toed without anesthesia and live a miserable existence before they're killed.

Domestic white turkeys have been bred to the preference of consumers - so much so, that they can't fly or breed and often have leg and heart problems, Oresick said. "Their needs and desires need to be considered and people need to take a close look at their values and if their food choices match up with their values," she said.

Poster said caring for all of her rescue animals is "a labor of love" and that she gets up at 4 a.m. to feed them, finishing nearly three hours later because she feeds her animals individually. "If you feed them together, you have no idea who's eating and who's not," she said.

The animals on Poster's property get along together, though she said the big pigs will sometimes "whack" the little pigs and the goats will sometimes whack the pigs.

Some of Poster's animals came from rescue groups, while others came from dairy farms or Animal Control Departments. Wilbur, the 875-pound pig, was found nine years ago, at a much lighter weight, wandering the streets of Shelton, while two of Poster's goats had been found on the streets of Norwalk. "They all have their own story," she said.

Poster said she decided to become a veterinarian while doing post-doctoral work in research and hematology at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York, where she became disturbed with how animals were treated. She describes her decision to go to medical school when she was 36 years old as her "first midlife crisis," and her decision to care for rescue animals as her second.

Poster, who's cared for rescue animals since she moved to Southport in 1995, said she became a vegetarian in 1980 and became a vegan, meaning she also doesn't eat byproducts of animals, like eggs, milk and cheese, about four or five years ago.

Before Mordecai and Fiona arrived, Poster had only one turkey, a domestic white that couldn't fly, but she said Farm Sanctuary was due to deliver another three turkeys next week.

Some vegans may sit down to a tofu turkey on Thanksgiving, but Poster said she and her husband tried it one year and it tasted like a rubber ball. "We chopped it up and gave it to the pigs. The pigs wouldn't eat it either," she said.