I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharking and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is much more respectable.

Benjamin Franklin

Consider the humble turkey, the most delicious and least appreciated creature that ever graced a platter.

Each Thanksgiving, thanks-giving Americans roast, deep-fry, smoke and scarf a whopping 45 million gobblers weighing in at a staggering 525 million pounds of succulent pass-the-gravy. Statistics detailing what percentage of that great mountain of poultry disappears on the last Thursday in November, as opposed to how much of it assumes a second career in turkey sandwiches, turkey casseroles, turkey enchiladas and open-faced turkey surprise with micro-waved cranberry chow-chow, are unavailable. But if the noble turkey plays a starring role in countless holiday suppers, for the rest of the year it’s mostly an un-credited extra – the mystery meat in your heart-smart hotdog, or the oversized, novelty hand-food at the local fair. That’s a sorry lot for North America’s largest indigenous fowl, the one Ben Franklin his esteemed self dubbed the “Bird of Courage” and young Tad Lincoln kept as a pet in the White House.

Fact is, turkeys have been strutting around the New World for the last 10 million years, at least, and were long a mainstay of Native American diets from Pasadena to Pensacola. Recognizing a tasty and tractable entrée when they saw it, early Spanish explorers shipped specimens back home, and domesticated varieties soon graced tables across Europe. In one of those delectable ironies in which history abounds, later colonial immigrants, ignorant of the turkey’s origins and hoping to ensure a steady supply of groceries in the wilderness, hauled flocks of tame gobblers back across the Great Water, only to be met by a feathered welcome wagon numbering in the tens of millions. And it is that original turkey, the alpha bird, Adam to a race of self-timing Butterballs, to which we pay homage today.

Once teeming across forest, prairie and desert, by the early 1900s the wild turkey had been hunted nearly to extinction, falling to perhaps less than 30,000 specimens. In 1937, Congress passed the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, assessing taxes on firearms, ammunition and other hunting equipment, which funds were instrumental in bringing Franklin’s virtuous bird back from the brink. Government efforts were amply supplemented by civilian conservation organizations, most notably the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF). Founded in Virginia about 40 years ago, the nation’s premier club dedicated to the protection and proliferation of the wild turkey now boasts a half-million members from sea to shining sea.

These days, wild turkeys number nearly 8 million covering every one of the contiguous 48 states, plus smaller portions of Canada and Mexico. Of those, more than 5 million are of the prolific Eastern variety, which can be found scratching and pecking from the Atlantic to the mighty Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. Rugged conditions in the American West, however, call for a smarter, scrappier, more independent-minded bird. In these parts, the regal Merriam’s is the turkey to watch.

Something like 25,000 free-range turkeys now list a Colorado address, most of them Merriam’s, although a community of transplanted Rio Grandes call the South Platte home and a few Gould’s have somehow mistaken Pueblo for the northern mountains of Mexico. In these parts, several thriving clans of Merriam’s make the Foothills a happy hunting ground for folks seeking a more authentic Thanksgiving experience. There’s a reason it’s called “Turkey Creek”, after all.

Wild turkeys are represented locally by two NWTF subsidiary flocks. The Mount Evans Merriam’s chapter numbers more than 250 avid members operating in western Jefferson County and parts of Clear Creek and Park counties. Lower down, the 400-strong Front Range chapter can boast more than 400 members and the distinction of being the oldest NWTF off-shoot west of the Mississippi. The Front Range group’s brief encompasses a broad swath running along both sides of the Hogback from Longmont to Castle Rock.

Like many wildlife organizations, the National Wild Turkey Federation contains a heavy concentration of hunters. And like many organizations comprised largely of hunters, the majority of the NWTF’s activities have nothing at all to do with hunting.

“We’re first and foremost about conservation,” explains a source deep inside the Mount Evans Merriam’s. “Most of what we do is create and restore turkey habitat. And what’s good for the turkeys is good for every other animal in the forest, so by maintaining good turkey habitat, the whole forest is healthier.”

But if the hills are alive with wild turkeys, how come you rarely see them? Chances are, it’s because they saw you first. Meleagris gallopavo merriami’s eyesight is about 10 times keener than your own, and it doesn’t invite familiarity. Indeed, far from the slow-witted creature of popular imagination, the wild turkey is a canny customer. Able to fly short distances at speeds up to 55mph, a typical Merriam’s spends its days feeding among thick, concealing brush, then retires for the night in the branches of a handy cottonwood or ponderosa pine, safely out of harm’s way. And except for their signature “drumming” during the spring mating season, wild turkeys aren’t given to calling attention to themselves.

For you, however, sitting there in front of a steaming plate of butter-soaked stuffing and marshmallow-slathered yams, the operative question is “are wild turkeys good to eat?” The answer is “yum.”

Although among the smaller breeds of wild turkey, the adult Merriam’s averages a respectable 15 to 20 pounds – easily competitive with your grocery-store Tom. And, like the ubiquitous Broad-breasted White, the wild gobbler responds favorably to all manner of preparation techniques.

“I usually take the breast, wrap a pound of bacon around each half, and smoke it,” divulges our Merriam’s informant. “It’s delicious.”

And so, with loved ones gathered close and the year’s best feed arrayed before you, perhaps you’ll give a thought to the long and distinguished pedigree represented in your nicely browned culinary centerpiece, and reflect on your meal’s wild cousins and those among your neighbors who labor tirelessly on their behalf.

Now give thanks for your many blessings, and dig in.

The Word is Bird

We recommend that no one eat more than two tons of turkey – that’s what it would take to poison someone. Elizabeth Whelan, American Council on Science and Health

Time-traveler Kyle Reese hunches in the driver’s seat next to Sarah Connor. She’s confused, panicky, and cute as a button. Reese’s dirty-blond hair is stylishly mussed, his artfully scarred face sweaty, and streaked with grime just-so.

“Defense network computers,” rasps Reese. “New… powerful… hooked into everything and trusted to run it all.”

Sounds serious. And it’s surely something Connor should find interesting, what with Arnold Schwarzenegger dogging her like the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Even so, she seems to have trouble focusing.

“They say it got smart,” continues Reese, slamming another shell into the 12-gauge shotgun on his lap. “A new order of intelligence…Decided our fate in a microsecond. Extermination.”

The Terminator is an awesome movie because, even way back in the technological Dark Age of 1984, it wasn’t hard to believe that one day soon there’d be robots walking among us, sophisticated machines doing what they do without so much as a by-your-leave from feckless and fragile Homo sapiens sapiens. And it’s only easier to believe now, in this more refined era of talking phones and Google drones and wristwatches that can guess what you might want for lunch, maybe. But it’s a long walk from GPS-guided lawn mowers to metal-punk kill-bots from the future, and, at the moment, everything fashioned by the hand of Man must also be guided by it. The goal of self-directed machines remains elusive, and will remain so until scientists working in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) solve a couple of particularly prickly problems.

A truly “thinking” machine must, at bare minimum, be capable of doing two things that people, puppies and plankton do without thinking. First, a genuinely autonomous device must be able to process vast amounts of information instantaneously to produce a minutely accurate real-time understanding of its environment. Although the vast and constantly expanding universe of Internet databases and increasingly agile optics may allow a machine to feast on all the same information that its creator can, and probably more, the breakdown occurs in digestion. Current computer architecture manages information in a rigid series of logical steps. It’s an orderly and reliable process that can tot up a spreadsheet in the blink of an eye, but that quickly becomes overwhelmed by the flood of data presented by sensory input like vision. Sure, your PC can handle it, it just can’t handle it fast enough to permit practical autonomy. And yet…

Last year, scientists working at separate laboratories across the country simultaneously unveiled their own versions of the “neurochip,” a microprocessor that mimics the inner workings of the human bean. To understand how, consider that your brain contains something like 100 billion cells connected by 100 trillion synapses. 

Rather than passing every impulse along in restricted linear fashion, each neuron in your brain communicates directly with thousands of others, allowing the parallel processing of almost unlimited input. At present, IBM’s neurochip prototype, “TrueNorth”, contains 5.4 billion transistors and 256 million electronic “synapses” that together can process information far faster and more fluently than your one-thing-at-a-time Pentium can. And while that’s a baby step toward achieving even plankton’s mental acuity, it’s a giant leap toward creating an electronic “brain”, and IBM is already exploring ways to connect individual neurochips together into the kind of faux-neural network that could one day drive, say, a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 cybernetic infiltration unit on a hyper-alloy combat chassis.

The second basic skill an “intelligent” device must master is doing things without being told exactly when and how to do them. No matter how smart the car, phone, or drone, it simply cannot do anything it’s not told to do. Our theoretical autonomous robot can adapt to an ever-changing and unpredictable environment. To do so, it must instantly identify and assess a potentially huge number of possible variables, arrive at a wholly independent “decision” based on nothing more than its own self-processed input, and originate action in the absence of situation-specific programming. For the armies of roboticists working the puzzle, the goal is to create an appliance that, given a clearly-defined “mission,” will figure out how to achieve that end all by itself. Needless to say they’re not there yet, but they recently came a little closer with the development of new software and sensory apparatus that help machines become not only more aware of their surroundings, but able to perform rudimentary tasks cooperatively.

Armed with those new technologies, scientists recently turned loose about 1,000 robots, each about the size of your thumbnail. On command, the devices assorted themselves into squares, letters and sundry other shapes with no help from their keepers.

You’re thinking, “A bunch of wind-up toys made an ‘X’ – what’s on TV tonight?”

Actually, each of a thousand self-directing machines was ordered to create something that it couldn’t possibly make by itself. Each one kept a clear picture of the objective in its tiny electronic noggin while maintaining a constant awareness of its precise position relative to all 999 of its shifting, shuffling mates. Each robot independently adjusted its location within the evolving scheme until the mission was accomplished. And they did it all by themselves.

Together, those AI breakthroughs are beginning to satisfy the requirements for robotic independence. The evolution of neurochips may one day make it possible for machines to process information with organic efficiency, and cooperative software improvements will likely confer the environmental awareness they’ll need to navigate complex real-world situations. Granted, making a scraggly triangle isn’t in the same league with systematically annihilating the human race, but warts of the worrying kind are quick to assure that some form of brutal “Skynet” is inevitable if we persist in trying to build a better autopilot.

Leaving questions of potential AI self-awareness and spirituality to philosophers and theologians, should we be concerned by the prospect of intelligent machines? Done right, they’d be both smarter than us, stronger than us, and if we don’t get along for some reason things could get awkward in a hurry.

Ask the folks who spend their weekdays messing around with AI and they’ll assure you that thinking robots will be pussycats because they don’t think anything like we do. Their electronic minds won’t be subject to deadly sins like greed and envy, pride and wrath – all those base impulses that make humans so dangerous to be around. Ask Oxford University philosophy professor Nick Bostrom, on the other hand, and he’ll say it’s precisely because they won’t be carrying any human emotional baggage that smart-bots might easily slip their leashes and chew our collective slippers into oblivion. They’re just too darned task-oriented.

Even smart machines, Bostrom asserts, would be programmed to execute specific, exclusive and imperative tasks, such as calculating the precise amount of tea in China, or making widgets. While an appliance imbued with reason wouldn’t be angling to corner the market on Oolong, or give a fig what happens to all the widgets it produces, it must necessarily care a great deal about sustaining its ability to perform its particular function. Keeping track of the world’s supply of Orange Pekoe, for example, would demand unfettered access to mountains of relevant source data. Manufacturing widgets would require a secure supply of whatever physical resources widgets are made out of. And neither function would be possible without an uninterrupted flow of electrical power.

“An agent with such a final goal would have a convergent instrumental reason to acquire an unlimited amount of physical resources and, if possible, to eliminate potential threats to itself and its goal system,” explains Bostrom, in his down-home, folksy, Oxford way. “We cannot blithely assume that a super-intelligence would limit its activities in such a way as to not infringe on human interests. The first super-intelligence could easily have non-anthropomorphic final goals, and would likely have an instrumental reason to pursue open-ended resource acquisition.

“If we now reflect that human beings consist of useful resources (such as conveniently located atoms) and that we depend for our survival on many more local resources, we can see that the outcome could easily be one in which humanity quickly becomes extinct.”

A grim prognosis, and certainly one open to debate. But we can’t say we haven’t been warned.

“Listen and understand,” pleads Reese, struggling against two beefy orderlies. “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop – ever! – until you are dead.”

Awesome movie.

If you’ve lived in Colorado for any length of time, you know the sun in these parts can be deleterious to the dermis.

And you’ve probably been read-in on four-bit mountain maladies like hypoxia, cerebral edema and hypobaropathy. Yet you’ve gladly accepted those risks in exchange for the wide reaches and long views available only in these rare-air regions. But before you get too comfortable, understand that science, in its never-ending quest to find new things to be upset about, has recently uncovered a new and frightening way in which our skyscraping home is trying to kill us.

The unholy alliance between altitude and suicide was first publicly noted in Utah. Frequently polling as the “happiest state” in the Union, the Beehive State also boasts the nation’s highest “depression index”, its highest use of antidepressant drugs and, most significantly, one if its highest suicide rates. A neuroscientist with the University of Utah named Perry Renshaw dubbed the disparity the “Utah Paradox” and started gathering statistics to explain it.

Renshaw’s conclusion? Residents of Orem kill themselves more often that folks in Orlando, because they’re…well…higher. Scientists in Austria and South Korea have reached similar conclusions, and after studying 2,584 counties from sea-level to shining sea-level, researchers with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) cautiously concur.

“Altitude is strongly associated with suicide rates,” reads their 2011 abstract. “This novel finding is not explained by county differences in demographic factors, income, or geographic isolation.”

That qualifier was welcomed with poor grace by a chorus of gun-control advocates, sociologists and mental health professionals that had immediately ascribed Renshaw’s discovery to various other factors peculiar to the Mountain West, such as a greater incidence of gun ownership, more remote living circumstances and less access to mental health services. In fact, the CDC considered all of those variables, and more, before reaching the guarded conclusion that altitude matters.

If you graph suicide rates on a map, what emerges is a broad band of self-destruction centered squarely on the Rocky Mountain corridor and bleeding west into the Great Basin. A CDC report for 2012 sets the national suicide rate at 12.6 per 100,000. Listed in descending order of auto-mortality, the most suicide-prone states in the nation that year were Wyoming (29.6), Alaska (23.0), Montana (22.6), New Mexico (21.3), Utah (21.0), Colorado (19.7), Idaho (19.7), Nevada (18.2), Oregon (18.0) and Oklahoma (17.8). 

On the brighter end of the scale, states with lowest suicide rates also tend to be lower-slung. Witness Rhode Island at 9.5, Massachusetts at 8.7, New York at 8.3, New Jersey at 7.4, and, curiously enough, Washington, D.C. at 5.7, the lowest rate in the nation.

No matter how you crunch them, the numbers lean to the lofty, although Renshaw insists the phenomenon is discernible at elevations as low as 2,000 feet. And if Alaska’s unfortunate second-place showing seems a bit anomalous, consider that while most of the Last Frontier isn’t all that high, it tends to be dark, and that’s not good for anybody’s head.

Closer to home, the tragic association between altitude and suicide is even easier to follow. The great mass of precipitous playgrounds that are Gilpin, Clear Creek, Park, Lake, Teller, Chaffee, Fremont and Custer counties routinely surpass the state average in suicides, while the counties of the plains – particularly the northeastern plains – consistently come in well below it. In 2010, upland and upscale Pitkin County, with a mean elevation of 9,940 feet, posted the sad toll of about 35 suicides per 100,000, the worst in the state by a solid margin. Down-to-earth Otero County, at a more modest 4,500 feet above the sea, was relieved to report a rate of just 14.9 during the same period. For what it’s worth, middle-class and middle-of-the-road Jeffco neatly split the difference with an average elevation of 7,055 feet and a suicide rate of just over 18 lost per 100,000 souls.

But quoting statistics is easy. Explaining them not so much. How do the thinking classes account for the fact that Intermountain West dwellers are up to 30 percent more likely to kill themselves on purpose than their down-slope countrymen? According to Renshaw, it’s a mental problem.

Protracted exposure to the relatively low oxygen levels at high altitudes appears to affect serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain. Serotonin and dopamine are the two chemicals most responsible for telling your brain to feel happy. Serotonin helps stabilize the emotions, while dopamine helps focus the mind. Women, in particular, are at risk of altitude-related mood disorders, since they generally run on about half as much serotonin as men. Exactly how altitude unbalances those essential ingredients of a contented bean is not known, but it’s hard to question the results.

To pick one example, a 2005 study by the Naval Health Research Center evaluated a group of Marines before and after they left their San Diego base for a month of intensive physical training in the Sierras. The soldiers returned physically more fit, but in mental and emotional shambles. Not only were they far more irritable, moody, anxious and distracted than when they left, in almost every case those symptoms persisted for at least 90 days.

To pick another, a surprisingly high percentage of new instructors at the United State Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs bug out after just a few months, typically citing depression and an inability to concentrate. What’s more, cadets hailing from higher altitudes consistently out-perform their lowland-bred classmates. In both cases, the unhappiness and loss of mental acuity can neatly be explained by altitude-adjusted serotonin and dopamine levels. But is it enough to turn thoughts to suicide?

Renshaw proposes that while most people can shrug off a moderate serotonin/dopamine tweak, it’s likely that some people, especially those suffering from severe stress, depression, anxiety or some other pre-existing mental ailment, simply can’t. Thin air can be the five of clubs that brings down the whole house of cards. On the other hand, altitude isn’t apt to push anybody over the cliff unless they’re already standing on the edge.

Not surprisingly, there may soon be a pill for that. Top American chemists are even now laboring to develop an all-natural dietary supplement they claim will ease the effects of high-elevation respiration. Curiously enough, if you’re reading this you may never need it, because there’s one more paradox that bears mention.

In grilling countless subjects, Renshaw noticed a pronounced tendency in people transplanted from low altitude to high altitude to spend a lot of time moaning about the mountains and pining for their sea-level roots. Just as often, however, former Intermountain West residents who’d suffered geographical demotion described feeling fatigued and scatter-brained and urgently drawn by “the call of the mountains.” A significant percentage, in fact, only escaped those persistent symptoms by fleeing back to their erstwhile aeries.

Sure, that could be sentimentality in action, a purely psychosomatic response, but it could also represent a genuine physiological adaptation to the rigors of thin air. As Renshaw explains, oxygen-poor air typically increases the brain’s dopamine levels, much as a margarita, a Valium or fat spliff would. What those innocents abroad may have been missing is, quite literally, a Rocky Mountain high.