Even though I grew up in the “country” on 3 1/2 acres, we had very few pets when I was little and I never participated in 4-H myself and never really had the desire to participate in 4-H.
Unlike my children who have been clamoring to join 4-H for several years now…which I resisted strongly. I’m not a huge animal person (to put it mildly) and the thought of all that mess and poo anywhere near my home just wasn’t my idea of fun.
But then the kids had a champion join their corner (their stinkin’ father) and it was a downhill battle from there. This past spring we joined 4-H and the kids decided to choose Turkeys as their first project.
As someone who has never been involved in 4-H, this has been a completely new and unique experience for me.
One of the biggest surprises was how much preparation goes into getting your particular critter ready for the very important “Showcasing.”
It involved showing up several hours early to make sure your animal/fowl has eaten. The kids then cleaned the pens out and made sure they were spic-and-span. And then the big job begins…giving the turkey a shower.
If that’s not bizarre enough (giving a turkey a shower?!), we found out that feathers take a long time to dry. As in a long, long, long, long, looooooooooong time to dry.
And that’s when the big guns come out.
You haven’t quite lived until you’ve experienced 90,000 blow dryers being plugged in (and shorting every fuse in the joint) so that every kid and their father/mother/cousin/brother/sister/aunt/uncle/grandma/grandpa can begin the process of drying their turkey/duck/chicken/pigeon’s feathers before they are taken in for the Fowl Showcasing.
Which would create a picture that would have to be near the top of my list of “Things I Never, Ever Thought I’d See In This Lifetime”…
Yes, this is my friend blow-drying his son’s chicken’s butt so that it would be dry in time before his son’s Chicken Showcasing began.
And what a good dad he is!
P.S. Please trust me when I say that I am not making fun of this dad a bit. I was the “good mom” blow-drying a turkey butt the very next day. True dat!
