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There is something distinctly American about the Wild Turkey; they are large, powerful and fast and, when erect and alert, stand three to four feet tall and weigh an average of 16 pounds for males, or Toms. Females, or hens, average about nine and a half pounds. There' is, on record, a Tom weighing just under 24 pounds! Turkeys prefer acorns but will eat any kind of grain, wild berry, or fruit along with frogs, salamanders, lizards, snakes and grasshoppers. Distinctly American, I would say: we will eat anything so long as it tastes good.
How did the expression "talking turkey" come to be related to this fine bird? When I asked Betty Smith of the Rappahannock Library what "talking turkey" meant, she said: "Earnest, maybe even negotiation."
"Bare facts," said Stella Clark, also of the library, "No glossing over."
All my inquiries, and there were many, resulted in the same: "....down to brass tacks,” came from librarian, David Shaffer. Now that could have sent me off in another direction for I am mightily interested in the derivation of idiomatic expressions. Somehow I could not relate turkeys to tacks, brass or otherwise. I stuck with turkey talk.
1 suppose the gobbling of a turkey could be called straight talk. His message, so loud it can be heard a mile away, can be translated into two strong statements: he is announcing his availability to all hens within hearing distance. He is ready to mate, or "service them" as the ornithological literature comments. His notice to other strutting Toms is that he declares himself the most elegant and desirable of all the
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