Even though someone painted the turkey's claws pink overnight, Worthington's Paycheck won the second leg of the Great Gobbler Gallop in Cuero, Texas, though it took three attempts to finish the race.
The Texans, anxious for a win, substituted a wild turkey as their contestant. Calamity ensued:
“We were so far behind (that) we needed her to run 20 seconds or less to even win,” said one of Ruby’s handlers, Eric McCowan. “We got a wild bird, and disaster struck. Last night, we went to a secret farm outside of Cuero and had a posse of six people who climbed a tree to catch this bird.”
The Cuero race team thought the 35th anniversary of the city’s Turkeyfest would be a good time to use a strategy from the 1970s. They hoped Ruby, without clipped wings, would fly quickly to the finish line. Instead, she flew the coop, and a $100 reward is being offered for her safe return.
“We’ve been clipping the wings for years. Back in the ’70s, they did not clip the wings,” McCowan said. “We’ve seen better days in the Turkey Capitol of the South.”
Walz and Senator Klobuchar were judges in the Worthington heat earlier in the year. Read the rest of the racing action at the Globe.
We'll have more news of turkeys (the human kind and the country) later in the day.
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