People see turkeys differently

Published 12:00 am Monday, December 9, 2002

For some of you, it was a challenge. Well, maybe on certain days.

But the return of our popular Spot the Turkey contest was again a hit this year, at least evidenced by the number of entries we received.

Thanks to the cleverness of Webmaster Brian Sorenson and Composing Supervisor Renae Ronquist, they found a place to hide the gobbler each day in the paper, up until the week before Thanksgiving.

Email newsletter signup

We would run in-house ads, from time to time, showing the reader what exactly the turkey looked like. The objective was to find the picture of where that turkey was hidden. Once you found it, all you had to do was clip out our entry form, then mail it in. We'd pick three winners a week, who would then win turkeys from the good folks at Jim's SuperValu.

Nearly all of our readers followed the directions. However, there were exceptions who decided to follow the rules a bit differently.

For instance, one person found the turkey, but didn't put their name on the entry.

Can't win if we don't know who you are.

Another example is the person who gave us their name, but insisted her entry counted because she couldn't find the turkey for that day.

Uh … no turkey for you.

And it gets better.

Here's my top five entries that I found to be the most entertaining from from what I'll call the non-Spot the Turkey contest. To encourage more participation next year, I'm leaving out the names of the lucky few (actually, one lady won twice):

No. 5: The colored picture of a turkey lifting our Thanksgiving Extra newspaper. We were promoting our Thanksgiving paper, which each year is chock full of news and advertisements. As a result, we had a picture of this turkey straining to lift the newspaper over its head. Wrong turkey, folks. Two people sent in this one.

No. 4: Eagle above an advertisement for Home Federal Savings. I'll give this reader credit -- he had a keen eye for sure. However, I think he looked a little too hard. Again, wrong turkey, but nice try.

No. 3: Austin swimmer. Don't ask me about this one. The reader attached her entry to a picture of an Austin swimmer participating in a butterfly race.

Maybe she was thinking about pork chops, instead.

No. 2: Goldie the Golden Gopher. It was the football version of Goldie, complete with the Heisman pose.

I don't know about you, but I prefer my bird without teeth.

And the No. 1 entry of the year …

Dairy Queen chicken strip basket, complete with a side of toast and fries. This was actually one of our first entries and it's been my favorite ever since.

You know, if you look at it from an angle, I think you could easily mistake one of those strips for a turkey neck. Or a Dilly Bar.

Anyway, thanks to all who entered this year's non-Spot the Turkey contest. I'll try to drum up some sponsors to see if we can get an award for this contest come next year.

Just make sure to give us your name.

Dan Fields can be reached at 434-2230 or by e-mail at mailto: dan.fields@austindailyherald.com