The Turducken Has Landed

The turducken. We all thought it was just an unusual recipe dreamed up by an especially carnivorous gourmet-type... but certainly not a real animal. Surely you've heard of the turducken. Every Thanksgiving, some overzealous culinarian stuffs a chicken into a duck which is then stuffed into a turkey. They roast the whole thing all day long and call it a "turducken", the finest delicacy for fowl aficionados. Folks like you and I all thought it was just a cumbersome name for a cumbersome recipe, that no such actual hybrid animal could exist in nature. Obviously, there is no such bird. Or, if there is, they must flutter among the unicorns in Brigadoon. So you can imagine my total shock and disbelief when I actually came across a real, live turducken while out walking today. I was ambling along the water's edge at the lagoon adjacent to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and so was this miraculous fowl. I spent some time looking at him with his bald turkey head and webbed duck feet as he made his way around the shore with an awkward chicken walk. I knew no one would ever believe I saw the rare and elusive turducken, so I snapped a photo with my phone:

















Please don't send a thousand emails demanding that I join the Audubon Society and learn how to properly identify birds. I know it is actually a Muscovy Duck (albeit, also not a common sight around urban Cleveland, OH), but I get so much more pleasure in believing that for one unseasonably warm and sunny day in January that I was really in some Brigadoon with the turduckens fluttering around the unicorns.

And I hope you are having a good weekend, too.