Turkey Costume

Somewhere along the line, turkeys picked up a bad rap. What do you call a movie that doesn’t live up to expectations? A real turkey. What’s the phrase for for the toughest method of giving up something you enjoy? Quitting cold turkey. What do you call somebody uncool if you’re a hipster living in the 1970s? A jive turkey. Granted, there’s also “talking turkey,” which doesn’t really have a negative meaning, but that’s neutral at best. If you really stop to think about it, though, the turkey is a pretty cool bird.

Just look at a turkey, for starters: the thick body, the long, skinny neck, that weird wattle and featherless head, all balanced on a pair of legs that look too frail to hold up a bird half as big. There’s just no way that design should work, but turkeys manage to hang in there and even thrive, even without the power of flight on their side. There’s something impressive about that kind of perseverance in the face of some badly stacked odds. Plus, how many other birds can you name who are the emblem of a major holiday?

Pay tribute to one of nature’s great underdogs (or is that underbirds?) with this winningly goofy polyester costume featuring a long, red neck with turkey-face head piece, red turkey-foot shoe covers, and a sparkly brown and gold body with orange accents on the wings and tail. Now, we’ll acknowledge that turkeys generally do not sparkle in real life, but we can give them that much, can’t we? Turkeys have been jive for long enough.