Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Killing Christmas

My father is a veterinarian, so I’ve grown up with all sorts of animals in and around the house: chickens, horses, mules, llamas, guinea pigs, mice, peacocks, guinea fowl, gerbils, goats, pigeons, doves, quail, pheasant, sheep, dogs, cats, raccoons, magpies, cows, pigs, ducks, geese, rabbits, bobcats, and turkeys. As an only child, I never had a problem finding a critter to keep me company.

Mr. and Mrs. Puddle Duckling were two goslings my dad purchased one Sunday morning after church. My parents and I would customarily stop by the Feed Lot to pick up grain and chicken scratch for the poultry we kept in an expansive compound of coops behind our house. Pre-Avian Flu epidemic, my dad and I would gawk at the little cream and yellow chicks, letting them lightly peck our fingers through the wire cages. On an impulse buy, I found myself sitting in our backyard cradling two banana-yellow newly hatched geese.

The gangly little creatures imprinted on me and provided many hours of entertainment one summer, much to my parents’ dismay. A budding landscaper, I dug a series of shallow ponds by blasting water into the soft Texas silt. A more accurate description of these “ponds” would be “mud flats” with tangles of roots and floating grass. Mr. and Mrs. Puddle Duckling were thrilled, and excitedly waddled into the sludge while I laboriously blasted the holes deeper with a high-powered hose. A few hours later, my parents came out to find their son, the goslings, and their entire front yard a black silty mess.

To avoid another landscaping disaster, my parents encouraged me to keep my activities indoors, and Mr. and Mrs. Puddle Duckling became permanent residents to the household. Every morning I would switch out the butcher paper in the tiled foyer, replenish their small wading pool with fresh water, and clean out the food bowls they had inevitably shit in. To amuse my parents, I would let them out of their enclosure and walk into the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Puddle Duckling close at my heels. Our cats would scatter in fright as the two bumbling birds would obediently follow my every step, honking and hissing along the way.

A traumatic encounter with a neighbor’s dog ended Mr. and Mrs. Puddle Duckling’s summer of bliss. I’ll never forget the two lanky, fuzzy, beautiful little yellow geese as they happily ran toward me honking in unison, their over-sized webbed feet slapping on the ceramic tiles.

The following summer, my dad brought home two poults. Nimble and streamlined, the baby turkeys reminded me of Velociraptors, bobbing their heads and sauntering down the hall. They too, resided in the front entryway where they calmly watched visitors enter and exit. However, my parents quickly established the birds’ role as turkeys.

“Now Frank, these birds are not pets. Don’t get too attached, because in November, one of them is going to be dinner. And we’ll be eating the other one in December. We don’t want you to get attached. These turkeys are food, not pets.”

Thanksgiving and Christmas, as I lovingly named them, were blissfully unaware of their future. Not nearly as loyal as the goslings, the pair would burst out of their pen and begin stalking the cats. Van Gogh and Tiger put the “pussy” in “pussycat,” but it’s no wonder with the shit they were forced to endure. Thanksgiving and Christmas would actively hunt the two cats, chasing them under beds and up trees.

As I watched the 4-inch plucky little chicks transform into 25-pound bronze and iridescent adults, I noticed that Thanksgiving was sizably smaller than Christmas. So when the fourth Thursday in November rolled around, my dad asked me to bring Christmas to the backyard. While he sharpened his knife on a marble slab, I stroked the bird, playfully poking at its snood. Miraculously, we remained calm. Until my dad asked me to hold the bird’s wings shut while he tied its legs to the persimmon tree.

Christmas gobbled quizzically. And I lost it. I started to sob uncontrollably, begging my father to not kill the turkey. But it was too late. With a flick of his wrist, Christmas’s head was severed, and blood sprayed everywhere. I went into hysterics. My father had killed Christmas.

Then and there, I resolved to stop eating turkey. That Thanksgiving, I sulked and nibbled on potatoes and cranberry sauce. All my parents had to say was, “We told you not to get attached!” Thanksgiving the turkey was depressingly aware of its missing cohort. And with Christmas gone, the cats were getting increasingly confident, even if the turkey was over half their size. Thanksgiving was moved to an outdoor pen, where it ruled over the chickens.

A week before the Christmas holiday, my dad made a miraculous discovery: Thanksgiving was a female. Lying in a shallow of dirt was an enormous brown speckled egg. Since the cold weather had slowed down the chickens’ egg-laying productivity, he decided to buy a Butterball at the market.

For years, Thanksgiving laid an egg every other day. I became able to recognize and imitate seven different turkey calls, differentiate between distressed, angry, or randy. I tamed her, and she bowed her head to let strangers pet her. She would calmly let me trim her claws or extend her wings to their full 4-foot wingspan. For a local Renaissance Fair, I was able to fashion a modified ferret leash around her, enabling me to browse the festivities while she pecked at bits of stray roasted corn.

Thanksgiving lived a long 8 years before dying of ovarian cancer. The poor creature became emaciated and unable to stand, but never lost the luster in her plumage or her resolve to live. She answered my calls with a shrill cluck until the day she died in my arms, one cold day in November.

4 Comments:

At 8:09 AM, Blogger Deidra said...

Remember when your parents killed a duck for our dinner? Oh my gosh, I still can't believe we ate one of your ducks! (Or that it tasted so good...)

It brings back memories of our large (mean) geese and turkey, that was too large to actually fit in the oven after it met its doom. I was glad to see that one go-- it scared away the "neighborhood" kids.

 
At 10:43 PM, Blogger Sarah Can said...

Frank,

You're an amazing writer and artist. I'm avoiding doing what I should be doing and stumbled across your site for the first time in ages. I've spent at least 30 minutes procrastinating by laughing and tearing up at your stories. I even read the turkey story to my boyfriend. He loved it.

No joke, you really should write and illustrate your own children's book. Obviously not with the blood or anything like that, but whatever you wrote it would be amazing. In fact, since I'm a teacher I'll tell you what I want books to be about and you can write them :o) It can be a hobby ;o)

How is life post SAS? Are things looking up?

Alright, I need to make a math assessment for my second graders so they have something to do tomorrow :o)

Let me know how you are... I mean it.

Sarah
Spring 05

 
At 11:29 AM, Blogger Deidra said...

Hurry and freaking post something new already.




Thanks.

 
At 10:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, great writing! I must tell you I endured a childhood experience of plucking a turkey on a family farm. Painful

 

Post a Comment

<< Home