Tale of 2 Turkeys : The Spared: Pet gobbler wins over family and gets a reprieve from the dinner table. Now his owners are seeking a new home for him.

Sam Garcia and his family love Dinner too much to have Dinner for dinner.

Let’s try that again.

Dinner is the name of Garcia’s pet turkey. Until he received a reprieve Sunday, Dinner was scheduled to become just that today, along with his gobbler brethren across the nation.

But now he will attend the meal as a guest rather than as the main course.

“He won’t sit at the table, but he won’t be on the table either,” said Garcia, who bought a frozen replacement.

“We’re still having turkey for dinner. We’re just not having Dinner for dinner. He’s so lovable, he earned a stay of execution.”

Garcia, 35, bought Dinner for $30 from a rancher in Lake Los Angeles last week, planning to slaughter the turkey Wednesday.

“I picked that name because I didn’t want anyone to get too attached to him,” said Garcia, a Palmdale resident. “But we did anyway.”

His wife and son quickly became fond of Dinner and grew uncomfortable with the notion of seeing him on their plates.

“Whenever my wife would cook dinner, he would poke his head in the window as if he knew what was up,” Garcia said.

The tide started to turn, Garcia admitted, on Friday when “I took the bird to my son’s school and saw how nice he was with those kids. They were all asking me if I was going to eat the turkey and I just couldn’t bear to tell them we were.”

Other family members spent the weekend pleading with Garcia to have mercy on the bird. When that failed, they tried threats.

“My in-laws refused to eat here if they couldn’t see him walking around here on Thanksgiving,” Garcia said.

In addition to his public relations skills, Dinner has other practical talents.

“He can protect your property--he gobbles at all strangers,” Garcia said. “He’s a better watchdog than our dog.”

But when Garcia decided he couldn’t stomach eating the bird, he was confronted with a new problem: “We don’t have a permit to keep a turkey in the city limits,” he said. “So we’re on the lookout for a good petting zoo where he can live out the rest of his natural days.”

Garcia said he wants to donate Dinner to a school or some agency where the bird “can serve as an ambassador for his species.”

“He’ll gobble on command. He really likes to strut,” Garcia said.

“He’s quite a ham.”