World’s Largest Turkey

In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday, we went searching for  the world’s largest turkey.  We didn’t  have to look very hard.  We discovered that the gigantic gobbler can be found in  Frazee, MN.  Like many other statues that  hold the name ‘world’s largest’, this one has an interesting story behind it.  It turns out that the current statue wasn’t  the first ‘world’s largest’ turkey to inhabit Frazee.  While researching the history of this  tremendous Tom, we found that this turkey had a predecessor.  We also found that the original bird met with  a rather untimely demise when he was, let’s say ‘roasted’ in an unfortunate  accident.  No, he wasn’t cooked for  Thanksgiving dinner.  In preparation for the arrival of a bigger and  better bird, the original ‘Big Tom’ was accidentally set on fire in July of 1998 by the workers who  were trying to remove him from his  base.

But wait!  The drama doesn’t stop there.  After the fire, the original ‘Big Tom’ was replaced  with a small statue of an egg.  The egg  was then replaced with a small statue of a turkey at the end of July.  Just days later, the small statue was  stolen!  It was later found and it  remained there until it was replaced with the ‘Big Tom’ that stands there to  this day.  The new turkey is over 20 feet  tall, four feet taller than the original and it weighs a hefty 5000 pounds.

So the next time you  are camping in the Detroit Lakes area of west central Minnesota, be sure to stop  by Frazee and see the world’s largest turkey.

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