Thanksgiving is in the Air

There’s good reason for me to ignore Halloween in favor of skipping ahead to the next holiday. Here’s a particularly good reason: I’m still unemployed and too frugal for a costume which is a real mood killer. But in addition, Thanksgiving forcefully assaulted me yesterday. It was thrust under my nose not once, but twice, TWICE. That’s more than once. Two times as much actually.

This year, the family plans to convene at my brother-in-law T’s childhood home in upstate New York for the holiday. Having been raised in Jersey and lived in and around numerous cities my entire life, I’ve never seen the middle of nowhere. I visited my college roommate in Vermont once, but we spent most of our time in Burlington, which is at least a small town, so that doesn’t count. For this trip, I’ve been promised farmland and woods and moors through which I can wander and sigh into the wind like a Brontëan heroine. These dreams, of course, have been dashed by the first snow storm of the season which blanketed the area in, well, in this:

But, hey, it's not the Liki Tiki

Until then, I’m left with obscene amounts of time on my hands. One of the few productive things I do with it is romp in the park near my house. I look at the leaves, pet the puppies, and give dirty looks to the joggers that judge me as they pass me on the trail. Whatever. I’m outside getting exercise and I know better than to wear those stupid little running shorts that expose your nasty old man thighs to the 40° weather. So let’s all just keep our self righteousness to ourselves, shall we?

On my way home from said romp yesterday morning, something caught my eye as I turned into my driveway. Something moved in my backyard. At first I thought it was Winston, one of the semi-feral (but very friendly) cats that belongs to our crazy cat-lady and sometimes hangs out with me when I read outside or when I come home drunk and need to sit down on the porch to figure out which key to use. I stooped to look under the car that was blocking my line of sight for soft little paws. None. I was about to write it off as my imagination when something else rounded the side of my landlord’s unsuspecting Subaru. It was a skeksi. Except this time, it was corralled in my backyard and I was blocking the only exit.

I snapped a few blurry phone pics and returned to the apartment where I stood there for several minutes wishing I had time to return with a proper camera. But wait! I have nothing but time! I flew out the back door with my equipment, praying that the skeksi hadn’t used my absence to flee. Happily, it hadn’t. That’s because skeksis are stupid. AND THEY ARE ALSO FLIGHTLESS, COUGH COUGH. You know who you are.

As I stood at a safe distance on the back porch zooming in on my find and feeling like the Croc Hunter, Beau’s words came back to me from my last skeksi sighting. Something like, “No, honey, you shouldn’t chase wild turkeys into other people’s backyards. They are vicious birds. I’m very sure they will start shit with you and they will win.” Those words continued to echo in my head as I snapped picture after fruitless picture from a miserable, safe distance:

So far away you has to circle me in red

Here I is. Bein as tall as yur table

Soon, I grew weary of precautions, so I snuck closer. I really like to have photographic evidence of my many wild, seemingly tall tales. Not because I sometimes lie (no, really, I am an Italian supermodel) but because sometimes even the true things I say stretch the bounds of reasonable credibility. I was sneaking up behind it musing on this point when finally, it came for me.

They see me rollin. They hatin.

With as much grace as one can muster when fleeing from poultry, I jumped over a bush and ran the 15 feet to my backdoor. As I snapped one last picture of my close encounter, I thought back to my vegetarian days many years ago when I hung “meat is murder” banners in the dining room and handed out pamphlets covering the inhumane treatment of livestock to our Thanksgiving dinner guests. Times they are a changin'. Now, I’ve officially added turkeys to the List of Things I Would Eat Because They’re Really Ugly. Right after pugs.