{"id":25563,"date":"2018-11-17T14:23:48","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T22:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/?p=25563"},"modified":"2018-11-17T14:23:48","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T22:23:48","slug":"turkey-pardon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/turkey-pardon\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/images\/presturk18.jpg\" alt=\"img\" width=\"650\" height=\"339\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Turkeys aren&#8217;t considered one of the brightest creatures on the block. In terms of intelligence, they \u00a0are not necessarily dumb &#8212; instead they&#8217;re described as very social, interacting with each other and with humans.<\/p>\n<p>Being pardoned from ending up on someone&#8217;s meal plate at Thanksgiving is an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/holidays\/presidential-pardoned-turkeys.html\">annual tradition<\/a> that began with President Truman in 1947. It&#8217;s unlikely the two birds, one &#8220;official&#8221; and one &#8220;back-up&#8221; actor, who are shipped to the White House each year from the leader of the National Turkey Federation&#8217;s home state, have any idea they have been saved from impending doom. However, it makes us humans feel good.<\/p>\n<p>Note:\u00a0Presidential birds are toms, while whole birds cooked for Thanksgiving dinner are usually hens. Toms are typically processed for sandwich meat and other products.<\/p>\n<h2>2018 Presidential Turkey Pardon<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Scheduled for Tuesday, November 20 at the White House Rose Garden.<\/li>\n<li>In 2017 President Trump made light of the tradition when he joked that he had been informed by the White House that he could not overturn President Obama&#8217;s pardons.<\/li>\n<li>This is the first year South Dakota was chosen to present a gobbler.<\/li>\n<li>Farmer Ruben Waldner, who raised a\u00a0flock of 50 plump candidates,\u00a0helped escort the turkeys in an SUV for a 1,400-mile drive to the nation&#8217;s capital.<\/li>\n<li>Waldner\u00a0played a radio in their shed to get them used to noise and brought a dog by to visit so they&#8217;re not spooked when guard dogs sniff them as part of White House security measures.<\/li>\n<li>The selected pair of Huron, South Dakota turkeys\u00a0were paraded around the city as part of a formal send-off for 2018.<\/li>\n<li>The birds are booked in the five-star Willard InterContinental Hotel before the ceremony.<\/li>\n<li>After the pardoning ceremony the 18-week-old turkeys head for Gobbler&#8217;s Rest at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. (Several previously pardoned turkeys lived at Disneyland in Anaheim.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Turkeys aren&#8217;t considered one of the brightest creatures on the block. In terms of intelligence, they \u00a0are not necessarily dumb &#8212; instead they&#8217;re described as very social, interacting with each other and with humans. Being pardoned from ending up on someone&#8217;s meal plate at Thanksgiving is an annual tradition that began with President Truman in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25563"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25564,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25563\/revisions\/25564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}