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More iconic to Thanksgiving than the cornucopia or the buckled
hat is the turkey. Ever since the first Thanksgiving, nary could
you find a Thanksgiving meal that didn't take advantage of the
turkey and its delectable, meat-covered bones. Despite the
turkey's perennial role as main course, and leftovers for
sandwiches for the next week or so, there is much about this
majestic animal/bird that we do not know. For instance, the
turkey is one of the few animals has both white AND dark meat.
Also, the turkey is one of only two animals that can be drawn by
tracing your hand, the other being the Two-Toed sloth, pictured
below:
All drawings of impeccable quality aside; the turkey is an oft-misunderstood creature
that we take for granted. Therefore, in the interest of serving
the public good, I would like to take the time to unravel a few
of the tangled enigmas that are knotted around the waddled necks
of the turkey in a one-time-only recurring segment I call Turkey
Talk.
Consider for a moment the old wives tale about turkey making you
sleepy: When a person indulges in a high quantity of turkey, or
turkey-related meat, they absorb a large amount of an amino acid
called tryptophan. Shortly after the meal, the subject will
become tired and listless, lapsing into a state that leading
nutritional scientists have called, "the Itis". This is largely
a misconception. Tryptophan by itself will not induce
drowsiness. In fact, tryptophan is actually a stimulant, and can
be found in many of today's hottest designer drugs. When mixed
with certain chemical sequences found in mashed potatoes and
gravy, however, tryptophan can transform from a stimulant to an
equally powerful narcotic within the subject's stomach. If this
happens to you, do NOT consume anything with caffeine in it, for
that will change the drug cocktail in your stomach from a
powerful narcotic back into a powerful stimulant, with a crunchy
narcotic shell. Instead, you should induce vomiting right away
with the help of an emetic such as Syrup of Ipecac or a sweet
potato.
Speaking of turkey, let's talk about Turkey. For those of our
readers unfamiliar with it, Turkey is that country that's right
next to both Iraq and Georgia. Georgia, the country that is. I
know when you think of Georgia, you think that it is part of the
country on account of the country music and the Georgia peaches,
but this is completely different and confusing. Getting back to
Turkey, you might be thinking to yourself that the country of
Turkey and the bird that bears the same name but with a
lowercase "T" might somehow be connected. You're partially
correct. The name "Turkey" comes from the Turkish language and
means, "land betwixt many countries and also two seas". In fact,
the word, "Turkish" is Turkish for "in the middle of
everything", and the word "Turk" just means "Turk". Turkeys, on
the other hand, were named after the city of Van, which is next
to Lake Van, which is where Volkswagen tested its ill-fated
submersible bus. In Turkish, "Van" means "Turkey" because prior
to some major reforms in the 1920s, the locals considered
themselves to be a completely autonomous Turkey of their own. In
truth, they were merely farmers, and all they had in the way of
food were the Turkeys we have today, which they called
"minivans". They made their case to the real Turkish government,
but decided to compromise their demands in the face of unbridled
laughter from government officials. As part of the compromise,
they would join the main body of Turkey, but in return, their
treasured birds would be called "Turkeys" to serve as a reminder
of how their humble town was once a country unto itself. The
officials said no to this idea, but residents still secretly
called the birds "Turkeys" as a quiet form of protest, and when
a crateful of the birds made its way to the halls of Parliament
in England... well, the rest is history.
Back in the US, we have a longstanding tradition involving both
turkeys and the president (or shall I say, two turkeys!?
Ohohohoho!). For hundreds of years, the president of the United
States would pardon one turkey every Thanksgiving, and that one
turkey would be sent off to a petting zoo instead of being
stuffed into a sack and decapitated. On the surface, it seems
like little more than a silly tradition designed to take up
three minutes on the local news, but the origins of this
tradition stretch all the way back to the year 1930. The Great
Depression was in full swing, and Herbert Hoover was lucky
enough to be president while all this was going on. Seeking to
bring an end to this greatly depressing time, Hoover summoned
the heads of industries far and wide to the White House to come
up with some way to pull the economy out of the toilet. Henry
Ford suggested that the government use a strategy that Andrew
Carnegie had devised for eliminating unemployment, namely by
eliminating the unemployed. Hoover felt this would be a bad PR
move, however, and sought advice elsewhere. The brightest idea
he got came from P.T. Barnum's son, P.D. Barnum. He proposed
that the president "pardon" a turkey scheduled for the chopping
block and send it to his petting zoo (P.D. did not work with
circus performers as well as his father did). This nearly
doubled the number of animals in Barnum's petting zoo, and so he
was obliged to hire more animal handlers. Hoover believed this
to be indicative of a larger way to expand American industries,
and began a campaign of pardoning animals across the nation: a
goose for Christmas, a rabbit for Easter, and even a sow for Yom
Kippur. Unfortunately, it proved to be too little too late, and
in the 1932 election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated him, a
victory which many historians attribute to his running on the
"Anybody but Hoover" platform.
What about how turkeys became domesticated? Have you ever
wondered how they went from being the high-spirited birds
beloved by Ben Franklin to the grounded, walking meat pouches
that they are today? The story begins deep in the heart of
Africa, in the year 1601. A native tribe, whose name is forever
lost to the dank bowels of history, was hoping to convert from a
nomadic lifestyle to a steadier, agrarian one. Good farmland was
scarce, and so they took to raising ostriches. The tale of the
domestication of the ostrich is far less interesting, as all
they do to avoid danger is stick their heads in the sand, and
once you put them in a cage with a cement floor, you can easily
remove their wild spirit through a series of mild concussions.
Their ostriches produced massive eggs, and together with ostrich
milk and ostrich cheese, they made fantastic ostrich omelets.
The elders of the tribe thought so, too, but they were very
health-minded, and so they sought a way to expand the diets of
their people. They couldn't produce grain in large enough
quantities to feed the tribe, and vegetables were just
disgusting, and so the elders reached an impasse. The tribe's
luck would change when in a moment of sumptuous serendipity, one
of the locals returned from a trip to the Middle East with a
strange new bird called a "minivan." The gears began to turn in
the elders' collective mind right away. A day after the bird's
arrival, they enacted their plan to create a creature that was
half ostrich, half minivan. This proved problematic, as the
ostriches, having long since lost their natural
fight-or-bury-head instinct, took to running the moment they
were introduced to this strange situation. Their handlers tried
everything, but not even their primitive wine coolers could
unlock the sex drives of the two birds. Finally, they came up
with a low-tech solution to their problem: late one night, two
of the handlers crept into the ostrich pen, pinned one of the
ostriches to the ground, and lashed the turkey to its backside.
Neither bird was happy with this arrangement, and the ostrich
took off racing around the pen, squawking or clucking or making
whatever kind of noise ostriches make when they're mad.
Eventually, though, both birds collapsed from exhaustion; the
ostrich from racing around the pen all night, and the turkey
from riding the ostrich all night... if you know what I mean. A
month later, the first ostrich-turkey hybrid was born, and over
time, the handlers worked the hybrids into the ostrich gene pool
until they finally had a bird that looked just like a wild
turkey, but with a much meatier torso and puny vestigial wings
like an ostrich. The rest of the tribe rejoiced. They cornered
the bird meat market with their new creations, and they were on
top of the world. Unfortunately, they were forced to trade their
secret to a band of Virginians who were interested in taking
them on a free boat ride over to the colonies. That
Thanksgiving, the colonists were thankful for their new
domesticated turkeys, and the tribe was thankful that they were
able to make even more money by selling the rights for one of
their more popular inventions, the omelet, to the French.
There. Don't you feel smarter now? You've glanced through the
annals of history without falling asleep, and now you can brag
to your friends about your far-reaching knowledge of the turkey,
and its ever changing role in our world. Now, undoubtedly, your
friends will say stuff to you like "that's a load of bull" or
"you're just making all that up" and sometimes even "that never
really happened!" These people are not your friends. They are,
in fact, nothing more than the puppets of Big Encyclopedia, and
are interested in nothing more than getting you to believe
whatever their "experts" say is what really happened. You know
the truth, though. It's not pretty, but you knew that, too.
If you enjoyed this piece, be sure to check out:
Thanksgiving Depression Made Easy!
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