Peach and Blossom, a pair of fluffy, white American turkeys, were “pardoned” Monday by President Joe Biden as he participated in the White House’s most offbeat tradition for the final time.
Any worries about the fowls’ collective fate were relieved late in the morning when Biden, in a tongue-in-cheek ceremony on a sun-drenched South Lawn before what he estimated was a crowd of 2,500 onlookers, used his office’s clemency powers to keep the birds off some American family’s Thanksgiving dinner table. Biden joked that they all had shown up “looking for a pardon.”
But the pardoner in chief soon got down to business, noting that Peach had lived by a motto of “keep calm and gobble on.” Blossom’s guiding creed, the president said, was “no fowl play.” (Author’s note: What may read like a misspelling is anything but, in keeping with the spirit of the not-so-serious and rather surreal ceremony.)
