A Thanksgiving Story
by Martha Miranda Miller © 2000

As a child we had raised chickens, and rabbits, so I knew how to cut off the chickens' heads, carefully hold the wings and feet until they bled properly, dunk them in boiling water for a few minutes and then pluck the feathers from them and then singe the hairs. Then they were ready for cleaning. The rabbits were easier, because one whack to the back of the head and they were goners and then you would easily be able to cut the fur right and back pull it over its feet to get the rabbit cleaned properly. I had watched Mama do that a hundred times or more. Nothing to it! I could do that!

Well, when I was around 40 or so, leasing a farmhouse in Pa., I got the bright idea that I was going to raise my own chickens and rabbits again, remembering the fun in childhood, and add to the chickens, my own turkeys. Not only did I purchase a hundred peep chickens, but ten turkeys. We had at the time eighteen of us sharing that leased farm, so I deemed I had a lot of help. Now the chickens I did not realize were what they call heavies, and they grew so fast, I had to go and buy five free standing eight foot pens to house them because they outgrew the chicken coop in but a few weeks.

To kill and clean the chickens was no problem except they all had to be done in but a few days. We had huge tubs full of chickens bobbing in the water, having dragged out into the yard our wash tubs to help in the cleaning process. We were exhausted after those hundred chickens were done and in the freezers. And then we came to those big turkeys. I knew what I was doing. No problem. They are just like a chicken only bigger! And weren't there only ten of them?

One of the girls grabbed the head of the first turkey and I proceeded to hold the turkey's wings, and his feet, just like when we were kids with the chickens, and she then proceeded to whack off its head. Well, well, let me tell you! That bird was a real turkey! He was strong. He was so strong he dragged me around in circles and halfway down the hillside while I was trying to restrain him and hold on to him till he bled out, and I was full of blood splatters, all the way into my hair, and all his feathers were bloody, and finally an exhausted turkey and I lay at the bottom of the hill in the bloody grass in a bloody stinking mess. And you know that turkey even lost his stuffings. Phew!

I looked up the hill at the pen at the other nine turkeys, and thought a moment and charged up that hill and had one of the girls grab the head of a turkey and I grabbed the wings and feet, and said, "Now, do it!" She did and when she did I pitched that turkey down the hill all by himself and he tumbled and tumbled and when he got finished, he was no dirtier than the other turkey. I had eight more to go and then there suddenly were eight more turkeys tumbling down that hillside in the bloody grass.

Afterward, we gathered up our ten bloody, dirty turkeys, dragged them up the hill, washed them off with the hose, ourselves as well, and then had to find a way to get their big feathers from their bodies. It took two of us to lift each stinking wet bird from the boiling water and their feathers stuck to them like they were sewed on. What we could not pull off, we burned off, and what we could not burn off, we had to cut the quills from their bodies with a knife. These were tough old birds!

Those turkeys stayed in the freezer a long, long time. We ate all the chickens first remembering how badly those turkeys stunk. But let me tell you, they sure tasted good when we did get around to eating them!

About the rabbits....I had gotten so I could not kill the rabbits, no matter how hungry I was, and they multiplied and they multiplied, and finally I took a whole pick up truck full of rabbits to the auction and sold them. Someone gave me fourteen laying hens, and after they gave us eggs for years, I gave the chickens away. Couldn't kill them either! Now I leave all that to KFC!

Watching Mama do all that as a child didn't seem difficult at all, just as a matter of fact thing. But for me, a one time experience was a life-time sufficiency.

Can't kill a rabbit. Can't kill a chicken, and definitely not a turkey! Bilo's turkeys are just fine!




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