BEHIND THE SCENES OF THANKSGIVING

When Jo Baker first met her Thanksgiving dinner last summer, it fit into the palm of her hand.

Small, white and fluffy, the young turkey and its 20 cohorts peeked out from their wooden crate at the local post office, only a day after having been hatched halfway across the country.

Already the domestic turkeys had experienced their first and only taste of flight, on their way from America's Heartland to the island of Martha's Vineyard, where Baker and her husband R.W. run their Pilot Hill Farm.

Between birth and their Thanksgiving-week demise each year, the turkeys grow quite substantially--from several ounces to more than 50 pounds in some isolated cases.

They grow closer to Jo Baker's heart, as well.

"They're big gentle giants, and they have a lot of personality," Baker says. "Doing the turkey chores was one of my favorite things."

But the "turkey chores," of course, have one purpose, one that is not so pleasant for the "big gentle giants."

Thanksgiving week, Jo and R.W. Baker slaughtered 21 turkeys--their entire brood.

And the carnage of 21 deaths is nothing compared to that of larger turkey farms, which raise turkeys year round and kill thousands for Thanksgiving alone.

Take Gwen's Poultry Farm in Needham, where more than 3,000 turkeys are sold each Thanksgiving, according to owner Douglas Owen.

Owen has managed to distance himself emotionally from the birds he raises more efficiently than Jo Baker.

"They don't have much personality. They're a little on the stupid side," Owen says.

Due to Owen's volume, he sends his turkeys to a commercial slaughter house, where workers first slit the necks and allow the blood to drain. After immersion in scalding water, the birds go through a de-feathering machine equipped with rubber pins.

The heads are chopped off, the entrails removed, and the feet cut off.

The entire process takes only about ten minutes per turkey. Then the turkeys are immersed for two hours in ice water to lower the still life-level body temperature.

Unlike Owen, the Bakers remain close to their brood until the bloody end. Without machines, each slaughter takes about two hours.

This occupies most of their Thanksgiving week, at a rate of five birds a day. "We hang them from a tree by their feet, and then my husband slits their throats," Baker says.

The husband and-wife team loosens the feathers by immersing the turkeys in hot water and then plucks the feathers before washing down the birds in baking soda.

It's not hard to figure why Jo Baker takes so much time with each turkey; her whole turkey-rearing technique follows from what she says is a respect for--and sentimental attachment to--the birds.

When they first arrive at Pilot Hill, the hapless turkeys don't automatically eat and drink on their own initiative.

Ever patient, Baker coaxes them along by mixing bits of glitter into their food.

Within days, Baker says, most of the turkeys have caught onto the idea of feed even without the added attraction of the sparkles.

Baker also has to herd the brood into shelter for the night; although chickens naturally seek the safety of the pen, turkeys demand extra guidance.

"They're not very bright, but they're sweet," she says.

Whether or not they engage in enough thought to seek freedom, these domestic turkeys lack the physical capacities needed to fly the coop.

"These turkeys don't fly, so the only time they escaped was when the pigs broke into the pen and broke their fence," Baker says. Even when given the opportunity, she says, the turkeys didn't go nearly as far as the pigs.

Although Baker and her husband have been raising turkeys off and on for the past 15 years, she has yet to tire of the birds she describes as slow-moving and sociable, if not exceptionally intelligent.

Despite that lack of smarts, Baker says she notices a definite response among the remaining turkeys as their fellow fowls disappear.

"I think those other turkeys would miss [the slaughtered turkeys], because they would call all day long," Baker says. "The first couple of days it seemed like their appetites dropped off."

Baker says that the turkeys became more reluctant to enter the barn used for slaughtering after the first day's victims failed to return. "I think they knew," she says.

"Something was happening, but they didn't know what. I think they missed their friends."

Out of consideration for the remaining birds, the Bakers lead each day's victims far away from the turkey pen. "We don't like to do it within sight or sound of the other group," Baker says.

Whatever mental capacities they may have lacked, Baker's turkeys proved particularly endearing this summer.

"If you sing to them, they'll sing to you," she says, telling of a group of harmonizing women who walked along the farm road and were shocked to hear the turkeys join them in song.

"They have this cute little noise they make, kind of like a trill," Baker says. "Of course, the big ones, the toms, do gobble."

What with the free concerts, Baker understandably admits to a certain sadness when Thanksgiving rolls around. Still, her affection has limits. The turkeys, after all, are a significant source of income--and she likes them with gravy too.

"When you're in the farming business, you have to determine which are your pets and which are your income," Baker says.

"You don't think of them as individuals, and you think how great they're going to taste on your Thanksgiving table."

From Owen's attitude, one senses that turkeys are not at the top of his list of desirable pets.

Unlike Baker, Owen has not found many redeeming qualities in the turkeys he sells. "They don't have much activity," he says. "They just kind of stand around and eat and drink and sleep."

Owen says he doubts that the turkeys can notice a difference as the holiday slaughter begins and the population plummets.

In addition to raising turkeys, Owen also breeds the birds himself--using artificial insemination since the unnaturally large chested birds cannot follow the course of nature themselves.

According to the breeding procedures, the 400 birds with the largest breast and the shortest legs can hope to survive the holiday season as producers of the next generation.

Still, surviving Thanksgiving does not guarantee a safe future or a handsome batch of offspring. For more than 1,000 turkeys, the true day of reckoning rolls around as Christmas approaches.

"They're raised for particular holidays," Owen says. "When a turkey hits maturity at approximately 20 weeks old, that's when they're killed."

Those raised for Thanksgiving hatch in June, Owen says.

Despite their differences, Doug Owen and Jo Baker are part of an increasingly rare breed themselves, the American family farmer.

Both oversee the rearing process personally and both sell their dead birds primarily to those in their respective communities.

Also, both Owen and Baker encourage prospective customers to view the birds as they grow older and fatter. Owen's farm includes a section designated for petting the animals, which include rabbits, cows, pigs, chickens and goats, as well as turkeys.

Besides their relatively tame demeanor, domestic animals make life a lot easier on food providers like Owen and Baker.

An attempt to raise wild turkeys for last year's Thanksgiving proved a failure, Baker says.

Beside several incidents of near escape--these birds do fly--the turkeys failed to gain enough weight and presented particular cleaning problems during the de-feathering process.

Discouraged by their results with wild turkeys, the Bakers returned to the more traditional domestic fare this year and raised one tom which reached 27 pounds by the week of Thanksgiving.

Perhaps even more impressive among this year's turkey crop nationwide, however, was one exceptionally lucky 55-pound tom.

As Owen planned ahead for Christmas sales, as Baker reflected on the relative quiet of a Pilot Hill Farm without its singing turkeys and as millions of Americans planned their Thanksgiving dinners, this particular turkey headed not for the dinner table but for the White House.

In the annual ceremony, President Bush petted the seemingly uninterested bird and exercised his power of pardon, thus sparing one imposing tom the grim fate he might have known.

Instead of the pen, the Rose Garden; instead of the slaughterhouse, the petting zoo; instead of the death edict, the presidential pardon. For at least one turkey this Thanksgiving season, there really was reason to give thanks.