RICHMOND, Calif. — While families across the country prepare to celebrate food and family on Thanksgiving, one turkey can be grateful for avoiding the dining table.
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Leon the turkey was found wandering the streets of Oxnard, California. After a brief stint at an animal shelter, he was brought earlier this month to the Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary in northern California. Under the care of the sanctuary, he's expected to live out the rest of his days as a pet.
"He just took to people immediately," sanctuary manager Christine Morrissey told the news station.
"He won't be Thanksgiving dinner, he'll just be loved," a sanctuary employee said in a video posted on Facebook on Nov. 2, in which the Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary welcomes Leon.
Sanctuary employees have learned since his debut that Leon, who is blind in one eye, likes to be carried, petted and kissed, according to KXTV. He even likes to have his belly rubbed.
And people have taken to him as well.
"Everybody is just swooning over him," Morrissey told ABC News. "He has just captured our hearts in the short time he's been with us at the sanctuary. We are so privileged and happy to save his life where so many other turkeys, especially in the month of November, are slaughtered for food."
Sanctuary employees told ABC News that little is known about Leon's life before his rescue. It wasn't clear whether he was abandoned or a runaway, although Morrissey told the news station that he seems too friendly to be a stray.
"He has been a lovebug since the point of being rescued," she said. "His personality has been very sweet and he has gotten more and more interested in being our companion in the sanctuary."