Turkey for Dinner

It's a strange title, isn't it? Well, Thanksgiving is coming up and all kinds of stories from the past are creeping into my head. This one is from many years ago; over twenty years ago. I was still married. I have not written much, if anything, about my ex-husband, so I'll start off by telling you a bit about Ed.

Ed is an avid hunter and fly-fisherman. If there is a season, he is hunting. One year, turkey season wasn't going so well. This was quite surprising to me, because our freezer was always full of venison, pheasant, trout, turkey, and whatever else he shot or caught. Anyway, Ed had made a trip to the local feed store for something. When he happened across a couple of turkey chicks, he could not resist bringing them home. Suddenly, we were raising these baby birds. They were ugly and had no feathers. Well, all they had were their down feathers. So, they were quite cold.

You see, we had an old bird aviary in our backyard. Ed thought it would be cool to bring these turkey chicks home and raise them up in the aviary for Thanksgiving later that year. He brought them home in March. That meant raising them for nearly eight months. I didn't understand why he wanted to raise a turkey instead of hunting one. I believe it was the guarantee of dressing up a nice fat bird for our Thanksgiving feast.

At first, we had to keep them inside the house. It was too cold for them outside. I wasn't very happy about this, but I humbled myself, and agreed (for three weeks). Ed set them up in this big cardboard box and set them in front of our fireplace with a heating lamp shining down on them. What was supposed to be only three weeks turned into six. It took them that long to grow feathers thick enough to transfer them to the aviary.

The chicks actually ended up getting kind of cute. I'd feed them every morning and they finally grew comfortable enough to run to me, knowing I had seed for them. Then I progressed to fruit. They were partial to grapes and berries. I was having too much fun with them. They would come to our sliding door and peck at the glass. I would always greet them with fruit. By the way, they were getting real big too!

This is when I decided I needed to detach myself from these turkeys! After all, we would be eating them. I saw they were becoming pets, and that would not be very nice. How was I going to keep myself from liking these turkeys too much to have them for dinner?

My solution was to name them "Dinner". Yep! I knew I had to psyche myself up for the slaughter. So, Dinner they became. "C'mon, Dinner!" Ed thought I'd lost my mind. So did our neighbors. I was constantly having to collect Dinner from the neighbor's backyard since they had now become big enough to fly over the fence. Those turkeys were not just big; they were fat! They did not have a field to run around and build muscle in. These turkeys would remain nice and tender.

Time was getting close to slaughtering them for Thanksgiving. I couldn't figure out how Ed was going to do this. He could not shoot them in our backyard. Would he take them somewhere and shoot them? No, that would be real funny for a turkey hunter to plant his own turkeys for the hunt. I don't know if that's ever been done before. After discussing this, Ed told me he thought I could just lure them to the door and feed them grapes....then slam the sliding door on their necks! What?! I think he was serious.

I finally had to put my foot down and explain to Ed that I'd had enough of these birds. My request was that he kill them without leaving one speck of evidence; no blood, no feathers, and no souvenirs. You know how they like to keep the beards? Wasn't happening. I wanted them dressed as if I'd bought them in the store.

When all was said and done, Ed did just that. Both turkeys were gone from my yard and wrapped up in the fridge! Better yet, one of them weighed nearly forty pounds, cleaned and feathered. That was one tasty Dinner!