Last week, I admiringly but grimly eyed up the seven turkeys I’ve raised over the past six months. I literally hatched them. Well, maybe not literally I. That credit goes to their mother. The hen conceived them — with help from the male — and laid them. After she did the hard part, I collected them, put them in the incubator, got a certain percentage to hatch, then placed them under a heat lamp and took things from there.

That was no sure process. I got about 60 eggs from the hen. It’s impossible to know how many had been fertilized and were capable of producing a hatched bird. In all, about 10 hatched. My sense is that this was a bad hatch rate, though I’m told that sometimes there’s not much you can do about that.

I ended up with seven turkeys. They need only about six months to reach full size — that is, “harvesting” size, or maybe more honestly put, eating size.

That brings me back to my “admiringly but grimly” statement.

As I looked at the birds, admiring the sheer beauty of several in particular, I grimly considered which to take to the butcher lady. We invited a huge number of guests to the Kengor abode for this year’s Thanksgiving — something like 20 people. So, we would need two turkeys for the feast, and I figured a third for the freezer. I left four in the cage for next year; three females and one male.

And so, I had to choose three to go the way of, well, the hatchet. That was no easy decision. Four were strikingly beautiful birds. Visitors to our property marveled at them. My mother-in-law would say, “You’re not going to kill those birds, are you?”

I wanted to reply sarcastically, “No, I’m going to put them on kite strings and fly them around the yard! Of course, I’m going to kill them. They’re food!”

I restrained myself, conceding her point. It seemed unjust to destroy these handsome creatures.

That brings me to another visitor’s observation as I shared my moral dilemma: “You know,” he told me, “Ben Franklin wanted the turkey to be America’s national bird.”

I had heard that. I looked it up. It turns out that whether Franklin desired this is a subject of debate right into the halls of Harvard (click here for a formal Harvard academic paper on the subject). No less than the venerable Franklin Institute weighs in on this burning historic debate: “The story about Benjamin Franklin wanting the National Bird to be a turkey is just a myth,” claims the Franklin Institute. “This false story began due to a letter Franklin wrote to his daughter criticizing the original eagle design for the Great Seal, saying that it looked more like a turkey.” Franklin averred that the “Bald Eagle … is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly … (he) is too lazy to fish for himself.” Old Ben judged the turkey “a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America … . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage.”

Yes, yes. Spot on — particularly Ben’s point about turkeys being native to the good ol’ USA. The Franklin Institute then curiously concludes: “So, although Benjamin Franklin defended the honor of the turkey against the bald eagle, he did not propose it become one of America’s most important symbols.”

Really? Aren’t we splitting hairs here, guy? Well, let the debate rage.

Personally, had I been in Philadelphia during the founding, I would have cast my vote for the turkey as well as the Declaration and Constitution. It’s my bird, for sure. Ben and me both. Truly, I think it’s America’s bird.

And if Thanksgiving Day doesn’t prove the point to you, then go eat a bald eagle.

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