It’s been two months since Dave Comer found Chester.
“He was laying on the side of the road,” recalled Comer. “I know it was a big animal. I pulled over, and I got out, and I set him upright. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a turkey.’ So, I picked him up and put him in the front seat, and we drove up here.”
“He drives around, and he parks right there,” recalled Dave’s wife, Christina Gibson-Comer, of the day he’d found Chester last May, “and I come over, and I say, ‘And you OK? Is something wrong?’ He’d opened the truck door, and I look down, and there’s this huge white thing on the ground.”
That’s Dave’s wife, Christina. The couple divides their time between their Washington, D.C. home and the Nelson County farm they’re building just north of Amherst.
“Looked like a wild turkey, but all white, so real skinny, and he was just laying there on the ground, he wasn’t really moving,” continued Gibson-Comer. “I knew what white turkeys looked like from them being in the cages on the trucks.”
Dave—who retired from the Navy in 2007 and now builds communication systems for aircraft carriers—didn’t know a thing about turkeys, just that he couldn’t leave this one, that’d likely fallen off a truck on its way to slaughter.
Now, though, Comer decodes Chester’s moods by the magnificent color changes in his caruncles—egg shell blue to grey to bright red—and the puff of his feathers and strut. Still healing from shattered bones and infected wounds, Chester now spends his days traveling to and from DC, watching TV, snacking on romaine and watermelon, waiting for the FedEx man, and following the Comers around like, well, a 50-pound chick.
“They’re way smarter than we give them credit for, and certainly can be quite friendly,” explained Dave, “and he’s very inquisitive. He likes the noise, and the action, he’s got to be in on it.”
The Comers have spent about $3,000 for Chester’s care to date. Their vet says the turkey may live as long as ten years, especially if he slims down a bit—not an easy task for a butterball breed that’s the state’s 6th biggest farm commodity.
“When he got to walk in the barnyard for the first time, it was probably the first time he felt grass under his feet,” Dave said, “because he’d been raised in a building, probably, with a thousand other turkeys packed in, so he didn’t know any of this. It’s all new to him. And now he’s adapted to it, and he enjoys it. I know he’s happy, I can tell by the way he acts and by his colors and all.”
“The rest of his life, he’ll live comfortably with us,” Dave said. “And he certainly deserves it. You’re a good boy, a good boy, good boy.”
