Big Chicken last week launched a broadside attack against the noble Brown Thrasher, the state bird of Georgia. A Georgia purveyor of chicken parts announced a drive to get the Georgia General Assembly to throw the Brown Thrasher out like a dishrag and replace it with a new state bird — the chicken! Yes, you read that right — it’s the fried chicken, the broiled chicken, the barbecued chicken that we all love to eat.

Don’t get us wrong. Georgians love our chicken at mealtime, but the idea of making the chicken our state bird crosses the line from sanity to insanity. The Georgia Conservancy will do everything in our power to make sure that such a travesty does not occur.

The Backstory: The Brown Thrasher became the state bird by a vote of the little school children of Georgia in 1928. In Suches, Hoboken, Rising Fawn, Schlatterville, The Rock, Attapulgus, Hopeful, Mt. Pleasant, Climax, St. Catherine’s Island, Birmingham, Stovall, and in other cities, towns and hamlets, in hollers in the mountains and lean-tos in the Okefenokee came a resounding cry from the children to make the Brown Thrasher the State Bird!

Some say it all started with Mrs. Holtzclaw’s class in the Mocassin Precinct of Rabun County in the shadow of Rabun Bald. Little Timmy Davis saw a Brown Thrasher during recess one April day. It was in a pear tree near the school singing a beautiful song. Little Timmy asked Mrs. Holtzclaw what is was, and she said, “Why Timmy, it’s a Brown Thrasher. Isn’t it pretty?” Timmy decided right then and there that the Brown Thrasher possessed such arresting qualities of nobility and beauty that it must be recognized. He started a movement that reverberated from Rabun Gap to Tybee Light. When a vote was taken in every school house in the state, the Brown Thrasher was the overwhelming winner! On April 6, 1935, Gov. Eugene Talmadge of Sugar Creek declared the Brown Thrasher the State Bird with the strong support of the Georgia people. Then on March 20, 1970, at the urging of the Garden Clubs of Georgia, the General Assembly in its wisdom, unanimously adopted a resolution making the Brown Thrasher the State Bird!

With this storied history, the Brown Thrasher has reigned as our State Bird for 82 years, and now, motivated by the apparent desire for profit, Big Chicken has launched a Web site (Flip the Bird) that calls for the General Assembly to ignore history and install the chicken as our new State Bird.

The Georgia Conservancy calls upon all Georgians to sign our petition to reject such a move.

Please join us today. We can’t let the Brown Thrasher down.

View and sign the petition here: www.georgiaconservancy.org/index.php?page=brown-thrasher

Since it cannot speak for itself, we must speak for it!

— Pierre Howard for The Georgia Conservancy