Fearless Crayons tackles the turkey!
I found the smallest one in the store (it’s only Mom_Crayons and me this year)… You know the “Egghead” nemisis of Foghorn Leghorn? The little roundheaded chick with the big, round spectacles, that used slide-rulers and never spoke a word of dialogue? I think we’re eating him.
And his body looks seriously lopsided. Pfeh. Frankenfoods!
Dutifully, I read the thawing instructions to be sure the little bastard would be ready for the oven today.
The instructions lie.
Well not entirely, it’s just that the neck was still frozen solid inside the body. How they stuffed it in there in the first place, I’ve no idea.
No problem. There are instructions about thawing with cold water. So I run cold water through the neck cavity, dutifully checking the temperature every few minutes with the sensitive, brand new thermometer I bought for my darkroom, lest I am felled by bacteria (I have a slight poultry paranoia).
After several minutes of running water, I gaze into the lair of the monter. I spy the neck. Damn bird must’ve had a ten pound head for a neck that thick! Reaching into the slithery chasm of ick, I manage to hook a finger around the inflexible neck, and pull.
Nah. Won’t budge.
The linebacker neck therein was too big for Tweety’s ribcage, and there’s not enough room for even my slender, dexterous mitts to get a grip.
Keeping thawing. I stick the corpse under the tap. Flooding Woodstock with cold running water.
At last I reached in and this time managed to get two fingers wrapped around the giraffe neck that was impossibly folded into Woody Woodpecker’s chest cavity. Ha! Success is within my grasp! (So to speak.)
With one hand bracing against the stump of the spine, the other clenching the neck with determination, I pulled with all my might.
“Haaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrh!”
With a sickening “squish-pop”, the neck errupted from the cavity like Sigourney Weaver’s alien bursting forth from a victim’s chest.
THWACK!
Hit myself in the forehead with my meaty prize!
Right bewteen the eyes!
“EEEEYYAAAAAAGH!”
(Did I mention my poultry paranoia?) So I was standing in my kitchen with an emu neck in hand from which Mulder and Scully would have shied away in fear and disgust, yelling:
“Salmonella! Salmonella! Salmonella’s on my head!”
I could hear Mom_Crayons chortling in the living room. “Need some help?”… Bitch!
I bury the alien neck at the bottom of the trash. Not even CSI could find it. I carefully examine the bird carcass to be sure the rest is fully thawed.
Strange it feels heavier… a lot heavier.
Somehow, instead of draining out the bottom, water had pooled inside the skin of the bird. I now had a white-meat water balloon!
So I proceeded to do the only logical thing. I poked it with a steak knife.
Water shot out as if I’d stabbed an artery - Chris Carter himself could not have conceived of such a scene! Mulder and Scully would have run off and never looked back! The entire cast of Six Feet Under would’ve fainted at the sight. The FX technicians of CSI would’ve have applauded with a standing ovation.
Salmonella spray! “AAAAAAAHHH!” Shooting into the air like Old Faithful!
Tell me. Why am I not a vegetarian?
