Lucky Gobbler Not Going to Table, to Dogs or Down Drain

The most thankful resident of Agoura Hills today could be a turkey named Dactyl.

He escaped the dog that killed his sister, a turkey named Ptero.

He escaped drowning when his owner fished him out of a toilet and revived him.

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, Dactyl escaped the ax.

“There’s no way you can eat the turkey that you’ve saved with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” said Shirley Buchan, his owner.

The mouth-to-mouth rescue came in May. The turkeys, which Buchan had bought on a whim at a feed store, were about 3 months old. It was during a cold snap. Ptero and Dactyl were being kept in a closed bathroom at the back of Buchan’s house on Foothill Drive.

‘Just Little Things’

“They were just little things, and they were just starting to hop around,” said Buchan, 22. “Somehow they jumped into the toilet. Both of them.”

Buchan peeked in to discover the baby turkeys thrashing in the water. She scooped them out and called her mother, Janet Weiss.

“They were really cold and gasping for air,” Buchan said. “So we took their little heads and spread their beaks apart and blew air into them.”

Sure enough, their little bodies filled with air, and they breathed, she said.

Not a Pleasing Thought

“It’s not so nice when you think about giving mouth-to-mouth to a turkey,” said Weiss, 50. “But we were trying to save them.

“We massaged their chests. In about five minutes they had revived. After that we warmed them up with a heating pad and a hair dryer. They were back to normal after about an hour.”

For Ptero and Dactyl, normal meant feisty. Ptero was killed a few months later when she picked a fight with one of the family’s dogs.

“I really can’t blame the dog,” Weiss said. “Ptero started it. Now we keep Dactyl away from the dogs, but he still goes to the fence and hisses at them.”

24 Pounds

Dactyl has black and gold feathers and a striking red, white and sky-blue head. He weighs a tempting 24 pounds. Buchan weighed him on a bathroom scale this week. She said she carried the scales outdoors--well away from the toilet.

For Thanksgiving dinner, Weiss bought a turkey at a supermarket. It’s big enough to serve the 10 guests she expects for dinner.

“We smuggled it in the back way so Dactyl wouldn’t see it,” Weiss said. “I wouldn’t want to upset him. On Thanksgiving, Dactyl will be outside the door, waiting for a handout. But I don’t think my family will have any problem eating turkey. They’re not chow hounds--they’re pigs.”

Dactyl’s Thanksgiving dinner will be a tomato. He’ll gobble thankfully.