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I had a most memorable Thanksgiving at my house in Payson, Utah. It was Rachel and myself, my sister Charly and her six children, and even my visiting brother Keith from Las Vegas with his whole family (Laina and three children).

Rachel had been a busy bee doing most of the food preparation in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, and I knew she needed a break. So on the morning of Thanksgiving while most of the family were sleeping in, I took Rachel for a ride in the Prius up the scenic Mt. Nebo canyon road.

On the way up the canyon, we saw wild turkeys in the historically famous Walker Flat meadow. That was a first for me, because usually we just see deer or elk. On the way back down the canyon we came to the big meadow again, but this time there was a wild turkey in the road. Rachel jokingly said “5 points if you can hit it!”

I took her up on the challenge, but the turkey was on to me and ran up against a fence on the meadow side of the road, too fine to pass through. I wasn’t about to ram my car into the fence so I just drove on past it.

Rachel again taunted me saying I should’ve grabbed it. So I put the car in reverse until we reached the turkey still at the side of the road. I sprang from the car toward the turkey and tried to catch it, but I was surprised when the turkey took to flight across the road, instantly too high for my reach. I marvelled as I returned to my car because the domestic turkeys I’ve had before could barely walk, let alone fly. I thought I could glimpse Benjamin Franklin’s perspective for wanting the wild turkey instead of the bald eagle as our national bird.

Just as I was opening my car door, I heard a huge booming sound, like a falling car hitting the bottom of a cliff. The turkey hit the window above the front door of the A-frame house across the road and down the hill. We watched as the turkey twitched its last twitches, then layed on the doorstep, dead.

Rachel said, “Go get it!”

We drove down the driveway, I scooped up the dead turkey, and passed it into the car to Rachel. We drove home and showed the family (Charly and her kids) our Thanksgiving turkey!

Little 5-year old Marquessa wanted to hold it. While I setup in the laundry room to hang the turkey upside down from a rope on a hook and butcher it over a garbage can, Marquessa watched a DVD and stroked the dead turkey on her lap like it was a favorite teddy bear.

I asked Marquessa if I could borrow her little friend. 20 minutes or so later I came back with a stack of tail feathers and said, “Here’s your change.”

In my little autopsy, I found a broken neck and bruising in the breast meat on both sides of its ribs. So if the broken neck didn’t kill it, the crushed chest cavity did. It was as if the turkey was thinking, “Wait, don’t kill me. Let me do it!”

It was all very funny, and on Thanksgiving of all days, we were blessed with a turkey! I’d love to say it tasted good, but its still in the freezer because we already had a turkey cooking.

See the pictures at the photo gallery here.