Turkey sit up front with rescuer.

Friendly Turkey Decides To Sit Up Front With Rescuer

A turkey named Betty was living on a small farm in Canada with two others. Due to a domestic situation, the family who owned the farm found themselves homeless.

The family gave away all of the other animals on their farm, but they were especially attached to their turkeys. They could not part with the three turkeys. They couldn’t, however, keep the turkeys either. The woman found a temporary place for them in a stall at a shuttered dairy farm.

Betty the turkey.

But it wasn't a good idea. The turkeys stayed for seven months in the stall. They were not allowed to come out and walk around, but it was the safest place that the woman could find

That's when Carla Reilly Moore, co-founder of Happy Tails Farm Sanctuary, stepped in. "When I reached out to her and explained that we are from a sanctuary and that we have other turkeys and are huge animal lovers," Carla said. "She was very grateful, and told me many times that she just couldn’t give up her babies but that she felt comfortable with us."

Betty is enjoying her car ride to Happy Tails Farm Sanctuary.

"Being the very social creature she is, she slowly made her way up to the front seat, first perching on the backseat, and then making her way all the way up to sit beside me for the drive home," Carla said. "She quietly sat there looking out the window, chirping in my ear. Like most turkeys, she is very interested in her surroundings and very affectionate!"

The rescued turkeys from homelessness.

For a moment, Betty perched so that she could peer over Moore's shoulder as she drove. "I know I was getting some pretty weird looks," Moore said, adding that she was driving very slowly and carefully so that Betty was safe. "I guess it’s not every day that someone looks into a car and sees a turkey almost perched on the driver's shoulder! To me, it was just another day in the life of an animal rescuer."

The moment the trio set foot on the sanctuary grounds, they had new friends to meet and food to eat. They gathered together and enjoyed their first meal.

Enjoying their meal with the other animals in the sanctuary.

Then they went for a walk to explore the grounds. It almost looked like it finally dawned on the rescued turkeys just how lucky they were.

"We get asked to take animals all the time, and unfortunately we can’t take them all," Moore said. "I try to take animals who are in a desperate point, that have nowhere else to go."

“Though wild turkeys may not be the PhDs of the bird world----that distinction goes to the common crow----they do have the capability to learn and remember important survival information from their environment and from those of their own kind.”

- Gary W. Griffen