Projo Offbeat Blog

A Maine woman has a wild idea, a proposal bolder than replacing Santa Claus with the Easter Bunny. She wants us to eat lobster instead of turkey for Thanksgiving.

I like lobster and if lobsters were stalking beachgoers and clawing the paint from our cars, I might be all for this, but they seem pretty content staying in the ocean and hiding under rocks, so I see no reason to eat more of them.

Julia Munsey's heart may be in the right place -- she's trying to help Maine's struggling lobster industry -- but she doesn't understand what kind of chaos she could unleash if her proposal to replace Tom Turkey with Larry Lobster takes off.

And I'm not just talking about fighting over the wishbone. What would happen if we stopped culling the turkey herd at least once a year?

The turkey population is exploding, and they're terrorizing neighborhoods across the country. The've moved from the woods to the suburbs and even into cities. They're stalking people, chasing them, even kicking them.

It was just a couple of years ago that a man in Middletown claimed that a turkey kicked him after a group of them surrounded his car.

And in urban Brookline, Mass., a turkey stalked one woman and repeatedly pecked another in the backside. A postal carrier -- somebody who has probably stared down pit bulls and German Shepherds -- acknowledges avoiding some houses because of those menacing turkeys.

A writer in Colorado describes the birds that live near her house as "turkeys gone bad".

She writes, "They slump through yards in close-packed groups like sullen teenagers. They shuffle through leaf litter and bark chips, gobbling up insects and acorns, heedless of private property rights.

"If a vehicle slows to watch them, they mob it.

"For some reason, they often cluster around the community mailbox. Drivers stopping to get their mail are sometimes flocked by ferocious turkeys that peck at the doors and attack anyone who gets out."

These are ornery animals, and they must be stopped. I know what you're thinking: 'It's wild turkeys that are terrorizing these people, not the turkey that ends up covered in gravy on my Thanksgiving plate.'

Sure, but how long before those domestic birds break out and join their crazy cousins? What kind of problems will we have then? Will anyone get their mail?

I say you can eat all the lobster you want on the Fourth of July or New Year's Eve, but eat as much turkey as you can on Thanksgiving. That's what I plan to do -- and not just because my safety depends on it.

 Tags  Fourth of July lobster New Year's Eve Thanksgiving turkey

Comments

steveo said:

Killing animals is no joke. William Blake said: "Everything that lives is holy." All you savages chewing the skin and meat of other sentient beings beware, for your place in heaven is not assured.

Link | November 26, 2008 12:19 PM
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Beth said:

Steveo, no offense, but which one of the twelve was William? No one's place in heaven is assured, but I don't think eating turkey is on the divine checklist. Maybe I'm just hungry, I don't know...

Link | November 26, 2008 12:56 PM
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