Meet Gregory. He is 72 centimetres tall and weighs in at around 12 kilos. He is dressed in white overall, with a red and blue ‘nose’ and black legs and feet.

Yes, quite right, he is a turkey. But uniquely one that doesn’t need to get anxious about his personal safety at this time of year.

You see, what happened was this. Late last year I was able to do a favour for a friend of mine, Luke. He decided to show his gratitude, something he had no need to do, but anyway. Luke is a part-time farmer who rears a number of chickens and turkeys for the Christmas market. And – on receiving my favour he showed up at my residence clutching a large paper animal-feed bag. Inside the bag was Gregory, although he wasn’t actually named until much later.

I recall he squatted in the bottom of the bag and when Luke and I opened the top he flapped and clawed the bag angrily so we shut it up again quickly. Gregory was to be the repayment for my favour. Now every turkey that I had come across before acquiring Gregory had been lying on its back, devoid of feathers, with its giblets thrust up its chuff and very, very dead.

Now I don’t have a problem with eating meat, as long as it looks like meat. But when that meat comes clad in a thick wad of white feathers and very much alive, that is a totally different proposition. My friend Luke obviously thought he was returning my favour appropriately, he left the thing in the bag on the coffee table in our sitting room, smiled and departed, leaving my wife and I with something of a dilemma on our hands.

What were we to do? Ask him to do the deed and present him to us oven-ready? Or donate the live bird to a farmer to do with him whatever he felt appropriate. Because, as my wife so succinctly put it, “I couldn’t possibly eat something I’d been introduced to.”

So he stayed, initially with the run of the whole of our garden. But this freedom had to be curtailed somewhat when we quickly realised that the turkey’s bathroom habits were not very selective. My wife soon baulked at cleaning turkey poo off shoes every time one of us ventured out into the back yard. So our accidentally acquired pet turkey was confined to his pen except for letting him have the run of the garden every evening for exercise purposes.

And why did we name him Gregory? Well it was my wife again; she decided that his call resembled the sound of his name, so Gregory he became and yes, he even answers to it. Not that he’s particularly friendly, obedient or even docile. One of his favourite tricks is to charge people – anybody he doesn’t discriminate – feathers angrily ruffled ‘gregorying’ loudly. He is not really dangerous but quite capable of giving you a nasty nip with his beak if he manages to catch up with you. So when we see Gregory charging towards us with malicious intent, most of us simply turn tail and make for the safety of the potting shed.

So why do we put up with him? I mean he’s not at all friendly, he’s never going to do what budgies do and talk. And he’s hardly what you’d call cuddly, so yes, why do we suffer him? I wish I could answer that.

Then there was the unfortunate incident with Auntie Grace. She is my father’s sister, unmarried and her seemingly only interest in life being church and, well just church. She must have spent two thirds of her waking hours on her knees. Anyway, she wasn’t on her knees the day she visited us and met Gregory face-to-beak. She ostensively came for tea and having drank two cups, the trickle down nature of the beverage inside her meant that Auntie then needed to visit the bathroom.

Now our downstairs facility is reached by crossing a small external yard. Not a problem, you might think. Except on this occasion I had forgotten that Auntie had set off for the loo at a time when Gregory had the run of the whole garden. So when she set off for her visit to the bathroom, oblivious of the fact that a man-eating turkey stood between her and the WC, all hell was let loose.

Gregory likes nothing more than an evening gallop, preferably in pursuit of a quarry and – on this occasion Aunty Grace was ready and willing to oblige. Happily the dear lady did manage to reach the safety of the potting shed with only two minor abrasions on her posterior. But to hear her shrieks you’d think she had been trampled to a pulp by a herd of stampeding wildebeest. Not surprisingly the decibels emitted were soon modulated as she began to quietly and desperately recite the rosary.

It took three of us to persuade her to tentatively leave the dubious safety of the shed and return to the sanctuary of our sitting room.

Which begs the question of what to do about Gregory. I’m told that turkeys can live up to 10 years, more in some cases. Which means that we could be dodging the bird’s beak for the foreseeable future. I’ve suggested donating him to an orphanage or old people’s home – and they can have the problem of what to do with him. Another idea is to donate him to a kids’ petting zoo. But I doubt there’s a kid in Malta and Gozo who could get close enough to Gregory to actually pet him. He’d have them for lunch. Or of course we could exact our revenge on the vicious creature by asking Leli, our local butcher, to… you know… process him and give him back to us in an oven-ready condition.

But no, I can’t see my wife ever agreeing to that, despite the scars she bears. So there he stays, very much alive and king of all he surveys. Gregory the turkey that survived Christmas.