The Importance of Being Ernest

For around a month, this majestic bird wandered through a small country town. From home to home he went, appearing in gardens and yards, yet somehow never finding one he could call his own.

Until now.

Meet Ernest Hemingway, a rather magnificent turkey of heritage breeding, whose wanderings have finally brought him to sanctuary

We know little of the chapters that came before, or how Ernest found himself alone. Yet so much of the story of his kind has already been written by us.

Across generations, we have shaped turkeys according to human wants, deciding how they should look, how quickly they should grow and ultimately what their lives should be for.

And most sadly of all, when those lives should end.

Somewhere amongst all that writing, the individual became terribly easy to lose.

But not Ernest.

For beneath those glorious feathers lives someone with preferences to reveal, friendships to forge, curiosities to satisfy and, we hope, many chapters still waiting to be written.

And this time, Ernest gets a say in how his story goes.

Perhaps that is the true importance of sanctuary. Not that we become the authors of another’s life, but that we hand back something that was never ours to take: their authorship of it.

Because a kinder world begins when we stop asking animals what they can be for us and become curious about who they are for themselves.

And perhaps therein lies The Importance of Being Ernest.

For the most important thing Ernest can ever become is himself.