Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  Over the river and through the woods to grandson's house we go.  I wrote this last night, so if there's confusion about the time line, that's why.  Any Vegetarians in the crowd might want to skip this one.

My pies are baked, the ingredients for our Thanksgiving dinner are all organized and in their places, and I’ve checked on the turkey to make sure it’s doing  what it’s supposed to be doing–thawing.   Somebody killed that turkey and now it’s lying naked in my fridge.  If it still had its head I know it would be glaring at me.  If I were any kind of person at all, I’d be sorry.  But the fact is, I’ll sleep good tonight, and, come tomorrow, I’ll cook and eat that bird.

I’m a hypocrite, I know.  In the past couple of weeks I’ve written about those terrible people who hunt deer and, worst of all, wolves, but when it comes to this turkey, I’m okay with it.  Why is that?

I’ve spent several minutes pondering this, in between watching a program on how next week’s live TV version of “The Sound of Music” came to be (Kerry Underwood is pretty darned good.  She’s no Julie Andrews, but I’m impressed), and here’s what I’ve come up with:

I don’t know why.  In my case it could be in early conditioning.  I’ve only ever seen a turkey naked and looking like meat.  Up in the north woods we see wild turkey often on the sides of the roads, but a wild turkey doesn’t look anything like a 30 pound white domestic turkey. The only thing they have in common is their name.

But since we’re talking turkey here, can I just say this about wild turkeys?  They’re the most insanely oblivious big bird I’ve ever seen.  They’re like absent-minded professors.  All manner of chaos could be going on around them and they’ll be wandering around in deep thought (or so it seems), crashing into each other.  If they could talk you just know they’d be going, “Huh?”  “Who?” “Wha?”

It’s a mystery why they feel the need to congregate on the sides of roads, but there they are.  You know they’re comfortable with their surroundings when they’re out there mating, yes, mating, without a care in the world.  Or a thought to who might happen to be driving by not wanting to see them doing the dirty.

Whenever I hear about turkey-hunting I have to wonder, where does the “hunting” part come in?  They’ll waddle up to your car if you park by them long enough.  They’re like car hops at the drive-in.  What’ll you have, sir?

Wild turkeys don’t care who sees them.  They know they don’t taste good.  Yes, people hunt them (some people will hunt anything), but if they tasted better even more of them would die.  That’s the way it goes in human-world.  It’s all about us.

Have a great Thanksgiving.  And forget what I said here.  If you can.

(NOTE:  A few days ago I wrote about a Detroit celebrity chef's bizarre idea of the perfect turkey.  "The Only Turkey Here is the Recipe".  If you love this idea, you're sort of out of luck for this year, but you could save it for next year.)