By Chris Cosci

It's Thanksgiving, so let's talk turkey. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think it has something to do with speaking in loud, gobbling noises. Okay, so that's not entirely accurate, but even if you look at the real meaning of the phrase, which is about speaking openly and getting down to business, it still doesn't seem to make any sense. Are turkeys really known for their no-nonsense, all-business talking style?

The turkey is just one of our fine-feathered friends that has become the mysterious basis for a common expression. The goose is another fine example. For some reason, if somebody is acting silly, we call that person a silly goose. I have seen a lot of geese, and I've never thought of them as being particularly silly. Maybe, when I'm not looking, they're pulling practical jokes on one another or slipping on banana peels.

At least the geese represent a relatively upbeat quality. Other birds are not as lucky. We generally refer to cowardly people as chickens. Granted, chickens tend to run away and fly around when they are approached, but don't all birds to that? If my only defense against predators was flying away, I'd do that, too. After all, to my knowledge, chickens are not typically trained in such defensive arts as karate or jujitsu.

We can debate the cowardly nature of chickens, but how can we defend the poor dodo? Extinct for over 300 years, the dodo is still used as a symbol of stupidity. This seems pretty unfair. After all, they didn't become extinct because they were stupid; they became extinct because they weren't exactly nature's most well-designed creatures. Dodos were among the unfortunate group of birds that couldn't fly. While penguins have great swimming abilities and ostriches possess tremendous speed, the dodo had no recorded ability to make up for its flightless anatomy. Still, this doesn't mean that the dodo was stupid. For all we know, these birds may have had a complex communication system or impressive architectural skills. We'll never really know because we killed them all off. So who's the dodo now?

Finally, we have the cuckoo. The cuckoo is known for its unique call and its frequent appearance in fine German clocks. To some, the cuckoo may seem like an unlikely choice to lend its name to one of the most undesirable human traits: insanity. However, once you learn a little more about the cuckoo, you may realize that the choice isn't so farfetched.

Cuckoos are actually fairly diabolical creatures. Unlike most birds, cuckoos do not lay eggs in their own nest. Instead, the cuckoo lays one egg at a time in another bird's nest - usually a bird of another species altogether. The mother then flies away, leaving the host bird with the responsibility of hatching the egg and raising the baby. Usually, the cuckoo egg is placed in a nest along with the host mother's own batch of eggs - thus disguising the covert egg operation. After hatching, the baby cuckoo will then systematically eliminate the competition for food by either killing the other newly hatched birds or tossing the unhatched eggs out of the nest.

Continuing the insanity, the cuckoo will then use deceptive calling sounds to convince the host mother to continue bringing enough food for an entire nest of babies - only so that the baby cuckoo can eat it all. When it comes down to choosing a bird to represent insanity, I think we can all agree that the cuckoo is a fair choice.

Sometimes you just have to wonder who came up with all of these bird-brained expressions. I hope I didn't ruffle anyone's feathers. Personally, I think all of these sayings are for the birds. (Okay, I'm done now.) Maybe I need to stop obsessing over these phrases, but it won't be easy. I'll have to just quit cold turkey.