Adventures in the Wild: Tales from Biologists of the Natural State

Thanksgiving Dinner with Memories of the Ozarks

Thanksgiving Dinner with Memories of the Ozarks Lightning, Persimmons, and Flies TA N J A M C K AY THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY is a time to celebrate with family and friends a bountiful harvest and the pleasures of life. It is also a time to honor our pioneering ancestors and to sit down to a delicious turkey dinner with all the trimmings. In preparing for this meal, it usually takes a lot of organization, from planning the guest list and menu to preparing the meal. As we sit down to this fabulous feast, we give a toast, give thanks, and begin to eat our food. We seldom give thanks to the turkey, and most of us rarely give the source of the bird a second thought before devouring our meal. I, however, look at poultry in a different light. When I sit down to a roast turkey dinner, I have flashbacks of my summer of 2003, when I was introduced to persimmons, the rolling hills of the Ozarks, and dusty poultry houses. It was my first year as a research associate in the Department of Entomology at the University of Arkansas. I spent that humid and hot summer traveling around the Arkansas countryside visiting turkey- and chickenproduction facilities. My boss, Dayton Steelman, and I conducted research to evaluate various fly-control methods, such as parasitic wasps that are commonly used as biological control agents in the broiler-breeder and egg facilities. We also identified pathogens of food-quality importance such as Campylobacter, Salmonella, and Escherichia coli that are commonly harbored by flies. In order to protect ourselves and to prevent the spread of disease from facility to facility, we dressed in white protective suits, hairnets, respirators , and plastic booties before entering these facilities. Since the turkeys 107 Sticky strips used to collect flies in poultry houses. Left: Fly strips from a facility with no fly problems. Right: Fly strips from a facility with a serious fly problem. PHOTOGRAPH BY TANJA MCKAY Spalangia cameroni (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), a parasitic wasp of houseflies. PHOTOGRAPH BY TANJA MCKAY. and chickens were also pure white, we were well camouflaged. In the broiler-breeder houses, the roosters often chased us with their spurs as though we were invaders of their territory. I am sure they perceived us as oversized roosters, there to steal away their harems. On a few occasions, their spurs tore through my protective suit. In the turkey-finishing houses, the toms grew so large that their heads were sometimes at chest height. We had to be careful when working around large birds since they would sometimes fly upwards. On those occasions, I would warn those turkeys that I was planning my Thanksgiving menu: and one of them was on my list. Fortunately, neither of us was ever seriously injured. There was one occasion, however, when I thought I was on my way to being part of an early Thanksgiving dinner myself. We had just arrived at a turkey-finishing house when the skies opened up, and it began to pour. The dark clouds were very low and seemed to envelop the turkey house. Trying to keep from getting too wet, Dayton and I ran from the Thanksgiving Dinner with Memories of the Ozarks 109 Young turkeys in a turkey finishing house. PHOTOGRAPH BY TANJA MCKAY. truck to the facility. We began to collect our samples. Dayton went to the middle of the house, while I stayed near one end of the facility. Just as I turned my head to look down the house, a lightning bolt hit the roof. The sound was deafening as the electrical surge traveled through the building. Dayton immediately dropped down to his knees at the same time a thousand turkeys hit the ground. I froze and waited for the worst. The turkeys fell silent for a brief moment in time, but they quickly recovered and resumed their activity shortly after the boom. Fortunately, there were no casualties. No turkeys ended up on a pre-Thanksgiving platter and I still had all my fingers and toes. However, the lightning did cause havoc in the electrical wiring, and it was another week before electricity was restored to the facility. Although working in the poultry facilities was a dusty and dirty job, traveling to these facilities was amazing. As we traveled the winding country roads of the Ozarks, we were able to see the changing flora of each season. Small...