Why Do We Eat Turkey?

Of all the myriad animals in the world, why do we ritualistically genocide turkeys each November? Why not cows? Or gazelles? Or poor people?

The answer: Turkeys are the assholes of the bird world.

Turkeys are loud, stupid, smelly, and they’ll stand in the middle of the road and get all up in front of your car and start pecking at the grill, even though your car is a thousand times bigger than it and you have places to be. When it rains, turkeys get confused and accidentally drown themselves. Turkeys don’t like Hawaii for reasons they have never been able to adequately explain.

Upon seeing a wild turkey up close, each and every previously rational, peace-loving human is instantly consumed with a murderous rage. Turkeys are the bird equivalent of the lead singer of the band fun. You don’t know why, but you really just want to punch them in the face.

Legend has it that the pilgrims ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving because it was easy and part of the native custom. As already explained, the vast majority of this legend is lies. Pilgrims shot turkeys because even after only being in America a week, they were sick of the birds’ bullshit. They only ate them because they were starving and terrible at not starving. It was only out of sheer desperation that they discovered turkeys were the perfect size to cram full of stuffing and able to be covered in gravy. In reality, the pilgrims hated turkeys even more than we do today. The turkeys outnumbered them fifty-to-one. They weren’t thankful for the feast; they were thankful that all those “gobble gobbling” d-bags were finally shut the hell up.

Benjamin “Motherfuckin'” Franklin knew this. He despised turkeys so much he wanted them to be the national bird. Sadly, his whoremongering got in the way of campaigning and he was voted down. The bald eagle was elected in the turkey’s stead. And what happened to them? They almost went extinct, that’s what. Ben Franklin knew that would happen. And he knew it should have been the turkey.

Vegetarians love turkeys, though, right? WRONG. It’s a known fact that crazy, tofu-loving hippies break from their soybean-ingesting ways on Thanksgiving to partake in a turkey dinner. It is generally assumed that this is because traditions are unbreakable or because they don’t want to have to hear their father making fun of them all night. Both theories are incorrect. Vegetarians eat turkey on Thanksgiving because they want to show appreciation to the farmers who murdered the birds that were dragging down the rest of the animal kingdom. Turkeys single-handedly make vegetarians look like idiots, despite the fact that they are regularly in better health than the rest of us fat-asses.

Turkeys suck. They are a blight upon the face of this earth and would destroy us all if they weren’t harvested for dinner each November. We are thankful the fourth Thursday every year, not because of family and not because of white-washed myths — we are thankful simply because there are now fewer turkeys in this world.

And also because turkeys are delicious.