The Great Turkey Massacre of 2008

Thur Nov. 27, 2008

United States, Canada (Krapsody) - Most everyone, I'm sure, know that Thanksgiving represents a day set aside for family gathering and feasting upon the traditional bird called turkey – a day traditionally recognized as giving thanks for the current year’s favorable occurrences, a day we refer to as Thanksgiving Day, an American tradition. But did ya know, it's also a bloodbath?

Little do most people know that domesticated turkeys are normally slaughtered at between 9 and 21 weeks old, depending on the size of bird being produced (the natural lifespan of a turkey is around 10 years). 15 million or more turkeys were slaughtered this year. The majority of young birds were dragged from their beds in hours just before dawn, stuffed into crates, and taken to veritable concentration camps throughout America and Canada.

In most "camps", the turkeys were removed from their crates and hung upside down by their legs from shackles on a moving line. Turkeys hung shackled for up to 3 minutes before being stunned and that time was probably frequently exceeded. The pain caused to heavy birds while they hung in shackles was reported to be considerable, where they were eventually killed in large, semi-automated slaughterhouses.

The shackled turkeys were taken along the assembly line to an electrically charged stunning water bath through which the bird’s heads were dragged in order to render them unconscious, and thus insensible to pain before their necks were cut. After the bird’s necks were cut they were placed into a scalding tank, designed to loosen their feathers before plucking.

Some of those automated steps are still carried out by laborers, turkey killers if you will, who have to do the slaughtering by hand. The rest, awaiting their turn, were dumped in chain link fence enclosed labor camps, and required to dispose of any unused turkey parts from the assembly lines. Generally, by eating them. All of this in the name of tradition.

Turkeys are still popularly believed to be unintelligent birds with claims made that during a rain storm turkeys will look up into the sky until they drown. Despite this image, the turkey is no more or less intelligent than a comparable animal, and while the birds will look at the sky for up to a minute during a rain storm, this is due to a genetic nervous disorder known as tetanic torticollar spasms. Which is a fancy way of saying, "scared shitless."

Clearly, as evinced in these photographs of turkeys incognito, they can't be all that dumb since they seem to know the art of disguise.

What turkey wants to be found at Thanksgiving?? Not these guys! Mr. Turkey, Run Away Run Away!

Other criticisms include the bird being 'too dumb' to realize it can't fly, and perceptions about the bird being awkward, both traits being due to the breeding of modern turkeys to be much heavier than their wild relatives to provide more meat.

Also, an inaccurate description of turkeys. More photographic evidence, as shown below, can discredit this accusation.

I think the graceful, streamlined Turkey Airlines can get plenty of meat into that jet. Don't you?

Mmm, just LOOK at ALL THAT MEAT!

Palin pardon amid savage turkey butchery

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has issued her traditional Thanksgiving "pardon" for one turkey - while other birds were slaughtered behind her. Too bad that crazy bird Palin also wasn't slaughtered.

The former Republican vice-presidential candidate was doing her governor's "duty" to save one lucky bird at a farm in Wasilla, Alaska.

But in the video footage of Mrs. Palin, a man can be seen butchering birds, and grinning like a madman in the background. Look at him, he's a spitting image of Groucho Marx!

Tom Turkey commented on this tragedy, "This is horrible! We've been farmed, detained, experienced forced labor. Much like Hitler had done with Nazi concentration camps during WWII. It's like a fricken holocaust here. At least they fed us well, but only to fatten us up!"

"I know my time is up next year, some new Tom will be pardoned, and I'll be slaughtered along with the rest. I was lucky enough that Gov. Palin pardoned me," Tom's wattle quivering a bit, "I've had to watch my friends, and entire family get brutally murdered!"

Tom the Turkey shows his disgust with people

"That Palin is just like Hitler," Tom continued,

or maybe it's Stalin she reminds me of."

"Palin is spelled close enough to Stalin, innit? What I do know is, she embodies pure evil. And Palin rhymes with Satan."

"Whew! Thank the Turkey Feathered Heavens that bitch won't ever be president, huh?" Tom exclaimed.

Tom's eyes start to bulge and well up with tears at this point, "This is a horrible time of year. People are complete animals. Have they no compassion? Oh, the humanity! This is madness!!! Madness I SAY!!!!!!!"

Tom says he is now being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder in therapy. He asserts that after several months he should be able to come to terms with what he has experienced thus far.

Mrs. Palin did not comment on the slaughter taking place.
However, she was quoted on camera as saying, "This was neat," she told reporters, referring to her "pardon" of a turkey.

"I was happy to get to be invited to participate in this. For one, you need a little bit of levity in this job. It's nice to get out and... participate in something that isn't so heavy-handed politics that it invites criticism. Certainly will invite criticism for doing this too, but at least it was fun. Teeheehee!"

Let us give thanks...

Can we not agree that it is just childish to like stirring up dust. It can be surmised that both Republicans and Democrats alike have flung plenty of mud in their quest for control of this country. So much so, that even a holiday like Thanksgiving has to be even more tainted than it already is.

Lest we forget, it was the Native American peoples who bailed out the religious dissidents, later known as colonists or pilgrims, when they were on the verge of starvation. The common accepted "Thanksgiving" feast, held in 1621 after a brutal winter at Plymouth, Massachusetts, was really a traditional harvest celebration that the English settlers, nor the Wamponaog Indians were not entirely unfamiliar with. The Native Americans and European colonists shared this harvest celebration differently in each of their cultures. The Natives taught the colonists to plant crops and hunt wild game in a land foreign to them. And Squanto taught your great-great-great grandma what teabaggin' is.

Without the Native Americans, the "Pilgrims" may not have survived the harsh winter and been able to celebrate their first harvest of plentiful crops in the New World. It is known that when Massasoit showed up with 90 men and saw there was a party going on, they then went out and brought back five deer and lots of turkeys. Possibly a Cheech and Chong-sized joint also. Though the details of this event have become clouded in secular mythology, judging by the inability of the settlers to provide for themselves at this time as detailed in Edward Winslow’s accounts, it is most likely that Massasoit and his people provided most of the food for this "historic" meal. Which the colonists bastardized by turning the turkey into a pop culture icon, complete with pink running suit, gold chains, and ebonics.

The Wampanoags, as well as many other tribes and the Colonists never fully trusted one another. Would you trust someone in a loin cloth, or someone with a hat three times the size of their head? But they were willing to come together for a feast, and discuss possible coexistence. That is the true meaning of Thanksgiving. And how did the European settlers thank them? By slaughtering them all and forcing them, one tribe after another, to live on reservations. Let's be frank, the Plymouth colonists were never concerned with "rights or ownership of land" or "freedom of religion" for anyone but themselves.

A mere generation later, the balance of power had shifted so enormously and the theft of land by the European settlers had become so egregious that the Wampanoag were forced into battle. In 1637, English soldiers massacred some 700 Pequot men, women and children at Mystic Fort, burning many of them alive in their homes and shooting those who fled. The colony of Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay Colony observed a day of "Thanksgiving" commemorating the massacre.

By 1675, there were some 50,000 colonists in the place they had named "New England." That year, Metacom, a son of Massasoit, one of the first whose generosity had saved the lives of the starving settlers, led a rebellion against them. By the end of the conflict known as King Philip’s War, which included such tragedies as the Great Swamp Fight, where hundreds of native women, children and infirm Narragansett Indians were burned alive in a large fort at what is now South Kingstown, Rhode Island, most of the Indian peoples of the Northeast region had been either completely wiped out, sold into slavery, or had fled for safety into Canada. Shortly after Metacom’s death, Plymouth Colony declared a day of "Thanksgiving" for the English victory over the Indians. How sick is that?

For many Indian people, "Thanksgiving" is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and at the hands of settlers, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, "Thanksgiving" is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship. Betrayal by complete psychotics.

Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out "Here comes Captain Smith!" So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner.

– Powhatan (exchanging views with Captain John Smith, 1607-08)

It is a Thanksgiving custom in America for the president and other elected officials to officially pardon a turkey. But who pardoned the Native Americans? I'd like to travel back in time and give them uzis to defend themselves with.

Like the Native American peoples, a majority of turkeys are also not so lucky. However - the turkey is the traditional centerpiece of Americans' Thanksgiving dinner. And Native Americans just get to be inaccurately, and poorly acted out in elementary school plays about a historically inaccurate Thanksgiving ceremony across the nation. Every holiday has some sort of irony and bittersweet story behind it, doesn't it?

Well, I suppose we cannot change what happened. But we can change the way we think about things.

Here's KTUU's unedited video that was posted to YouTube, which features, as the governor speaks at Triple D Farm & Hatchery outside Wasilla, an unblinking look at what happens at turkey farms the week before Thanksgiving.

Sarah is one cold turkey.

As for the rest of you turkeys, good luck in escaping Christmas Day Carnage!