The GREAT ALASKA TURKEY BOMB

A woman takes to the skies to make sure people in remote areas aren't forgotten for the holidays

- BY Caroline Fanning

IT BEGINS WITH a nyeeerhhh, a steady buzz that reverberates off towering Alaskan timber—Sitka spruce, western hemlock. It's a signal, but not one to be alarmed by. It's less “Duck and cover,” more “Come and get it!”

So you step outside your house, where there are few roads and fewer neighbors, and see it. A single-engine plane flies low—lower than you thought possible, just a few dozen feet off the ground if the area is clear enough, playing limbo with the tree line. The plane’s door whips open, and a black package is tossed out, plummeting to earth with an attached yellow tail streaming behind. It lands not with a boom or kapow, just a dull doink, or a muffled thwump if met by snow.

Congratulations, you’ve just been turkey bombed!

The “bomb” is a 15-pound frozen turkey stuffed into a trash bag with a long string of caution tape tied around it for easy visibility. Since 2021, Alaska native Esther Keim has been dropping them from the air to remote Alaskans who might otherwise be carving squirrel, moose or Spam for Thanksgiving dinner. Around Christmas, the sky rains holiday hams. Last year, Keim and her best friend and co-bomber, Heidi Hastings, flew together from their hangar near Anchorage across south-central Alaska, sometimes covering 140 miles in a day to deliver as many as 85 turkeys and hams to remote residents.