Turkey Day

*In honor of Thanksgiving, I've decided to tell my favorite turkey story*

I love to hunt. Geese, squirrel, but especially ducks. I've eaten duck almost every day this week, and I'm trying to get as many in my freezer as I can, to last through the long, duck-seasonless eleven months to come. If this offends you, I've heard that alfalfa plants can feel pain, and that when farmers pick them from the ground, their tiny death screams can barely be heard over the buckets of blood spraying out of their alfalfa corpses to the dirt. The alfalfa farmers don't even wear shirts, and often harvest their plants in the nude because their clothing would just get ruined.
As much as I love hunting, I've never taken out a turkey. When I was about seventeen, and my brother around twelve, he suddenly picked up an obsession with turkey calling. All of a sudden, these boxes were coming in the mail, and I was sitting in my room, plugging my ears, and screaming for him to cut out all the racket. All that clacking and whistling can make a guy go crazier than the fact that no kid will ever be able to make the, "Wanna take a bite of my ding-dong?" joke to his lunchroom school friends again. That always got a laugh, and then you got to eat your snack cake as a reward for being funny. The world just isn't fair.
Anyway, my brother was convinced that some woods a couple miles from our house contained turkeys, and of all people, his twelve year-old self was going to be the one to take these turkeys down. The only person to take him seriously was our cousin, younger brother of The Rabbit. These two little farts were going to go into the woods with no turkey hunting experience, and come back with a gobbler. Not bloody likely.
So the both of them practiced with their turkey calls non-stop, and I went hoarse screaming for them to please, please shut up, threatening all manner of big-brother beatings. There was always the slightest hope that they wouldn't quit, because nothing is more fun than beating up your little brother.
Finally, the day came. The night before, the Rabbit and I made glorious fun of our goofy, 160-pounds combined younger brothers, while devastating their very souls at Goldeneye 007 for the N64. It was an incredible night of destruction, and after the two younger brothers went to bed early, their chosen Goldeneye characters dead 1000 times over,The Rabbit and I played so much Nintendo 64, Mario actually came out of my TV like in The Ring and begged me to stop. "Sorry Mario," I said, "but you just get right back in there and break some bricks with your head for me. How else am I supposed to get coins?" This was before the Plumber's Union made such things illegal.
Anyway, the Rabbit and I awoke the next morning with the sun in our eyes, and the N64 controllers still in our hands. This caused some difficult to explain cramps. Anyway, some ruckus was going on outside, and after boldly cursing the morning, I pushed my way out of the house to see what was afoot.
The dogs were barking, my parents were outside taking pictures, and The Rabbit was probably eating something.
Well, what do I see but those two fotknockers, wearing their goofy, oversized camo, holding up a turkey twice as big as they were, folding out its plumage like a royal flush at the high stakes table at the Palms. I punched myself in the face, but the turkey didn't disappear. It was still there until we cooked it and ate it the next day. Or maybe it was that day, I don't remember. I just said "the next day" for sentence flow.
So let this lesson be remembered:
Kids, work hard. Dreams do come true. And then your older brother will beg you to take him turkey hunting with you. You can use this as leverage for pretty much anything you want. He'll even let you win at Call of Halo, or whatever it is you kids play now. Get off my lawn.