T-Day plus five

One turkey’s nightmare

By Chandler Walter, Humour Editor

I hid. It was cowardly and wrong and shameful, but it was all I could do. I hid behind the chicken coop on the far side of the farm. There is an old tractor wheel there, and I buried myself inside, beneath the mud and twigs, and waited.

For days the rumour had been going around: the time of reckoning was upon us. It was an old story, something mothers would tell their chicks to get them into nest at night. No one actually believed it would happen.

It was too crazy to be true. For just one day a year, the humans slaughter and devour our specific species? They were carnivores, sure, but they weren’t monsters.

How naïve we were. How trusting: so blind to the evil that was staring us in the face.

That changed on October 11.

It was a cold, bright, autumn day.

They came in trucks.

We were supposed to go with them in the trucks.

No one understood what was happening. Maybe they were taking us to a new farm. Maybe they were setting us free, out in the wild. That was all until Pecky, a young jennie no older than eight months, was grabbed and tossed into the back of one of the trucks. Everybody panicked.

It was anarchy. They grabbed my friends, my family, everyone I had ever known.

They grabbed them by their necks, by their claws, whatever they could get their evil human hands on. There were just too many of them. My dear friend Gobbles got one right in the eye, but before she could do anything there were two more on her, pinning her down before throwing her into the trucks.

Our entire farm, wiped out.

I’m still here.

I was here when I smelled the wretched scent of dinner coming from the farmhouse, and I was here when they found me, lamenting that they’d missed one.

They’ve seen fit to leave me here for another year, until I’ll be “nice and big” for next Thanksgiving.

But by that time we’ll be ready. The pigs have begun preparation to revolt before Christmas, saving their own skins from the oven. I will spend the next year teaching all the new turkeys that are born or brought onto this farm the horrors that befall us every October.

We’ll see who will be giving thanks then.