1 Before you tuck into that nicely browned Thanksgiving turkey, imagine it as the nation's symbol.
2 There's an argument to be dished out, with a side of tongue-in-cheek, that Ben Franklin had it right about turkeys and eagles.
3 The turkey – wild ones, anyway – is a 'much more respectable bird,' Franklin wrote.
4 The bald eagle, and these aren't his exact words, is a slob that flimflams America with gung-ho glares.
5 Evidence is at the Orange County, Florida, landfill, where eagles hang with vultures, a bunch of dude-bros with guts for garbage.
6 Meanwhile, turkeys that nobly roam landfill woods never join the countless birds that fight over dump desserts like gnarly chicken bones.
7 Turkeys are fitness nuts, grazing for seeds, acorns, mushrooms and occasional frog legs and have the ropy muscles to hit the afterburners if bothered.
8 They can run 20 miles per hour and fly 55 mph.
9 If you heard that a turkey is so stupid it will look up at rain and drown, that's fiction.
10 Don't even doubt their laser eyes and sonar-grade ears.
11 Hunters know if they twitch a muscle, a gobbler will see it from a mile away and then be miles away.
12 Their ability to pinpoint the direction and distance of sound in heavy woods is astounding, say biologists.
13 If you are what you eat, then turkeys taste like nature.
14 'With a lot less fat' than a store-bought roaster, said Tom Hughes of the National Wild Turkey Federation.
15 If eagles are what they wolf down at landfills, like the rotting kielbasa they can spot with their vaunted telescopic vision, then yuck.
16 What they may do best is a pretty weird face on the back of a $1 bill.
17 Yes, scavenging – an eagle and vulture specialty – is a virtue, like getting up at dawn on Saturday to be the first to prowl garage sales.
18 But Franklin was bummed that the nation's symbol of patriotism is a brazen thief.
19 It will perch in a tree while an osprey works to snatch a fish from the water.
20 Then the national bird swoops in, with a big display of land of the free and home of the brave, scaring the bowels out of the osprey until it drops its meal.
21 Full disclosure: Turkeys also bully – themselves.
22 They are known to catch their reflections on the side of a car and have a go at that mirrored bad-boy.
23 A standard male eagle in Florida stands 2 feet, 4 inches, weighs less than 10 pounds and has a wingspan of nearly 6 feet.
24 'What they've evolved to do is a relentless pursuit of survival,' said Matt Smith, Audubon Florida EagleWatch coordinator.
25 Typical toms stand 3 feet, 4 inches, weigh 19 pounds and have wingspans of 4 feet, 6 inches.
26 'They are a beautiful bird,' said Roger Shields, a state biologist.
27 'When they get the sun on them, I think they are just as pretty as an eagle'.
28 Both avian icons made legendary comebacks.
29 Succumbing to pesticides in the contiguous United States, eagles dwindled to fewer than 500 breeding pairs by the early 1960s.
30 Today, there are more than 10,000. When the nation's forests were mowed down through the early 1900s, turkeys declined to a few hundred thousand.
31 Today, there are more than 6 million.
32 Biologists nursing them to health found striking differences.
33 A wild turkey captured for medical care or relocation may display a truly wild spirit, all but flailing itself to death to escape.
34 Ailing eagles taken to the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland, Florida, seem to respond with: 'Wow!
35 Food, nice people, awesome vulture stink'.
36 If there is something immensely American about eagles at Florida landfills, it's the appeal of fast food in abundance.
37 Workers at Orange County's landfill said a single eagle showed up in the early '80s.
38 The next year there were two, then four the year after.
39 An engineer counted 90 within 30 minutes two years ago.
40 As numbers rose, their behavior shifted from rodent hunter to refuse specialist.
41 State biologist Michelle Vandeventer suspects eagles are at least partly drawn to landfills for companionship and loafing.
42 But the birds are nothing if not savvy opportunists, Vandeventer said.
43 'Mama eagles don't raise fools'.

The turkey – wild ones , anyway – is a " much more respectable bird , " Franklin wrote .
" much more respectable bird , "
Why are wild turkeys more respectable? 