The Traffic Cone of Doom

It's a good job the turkeys at Newhouse Farm didn't have a clue that Christmas was coming.

Should the turkeys ever have asked me about Christmas, I can imagine the conversation would have gone something like this...

Turkeys: "Holly, what's Christmas?"

Me: "It's a time of year when people celebrate and eat lots of food."

Turkeys: "What kind of food?"

Me: "Erm... you."

Turkeys: "Oh bother."

It would've be a short conversation. Even shorter considering that turkeys can't speak and can only gobble. Anyway, moving swiftly on...

In the weeks building up to Christmas I became increasingly aware that the clock was ticking for the turkeys and they had precious little time left. Since July we'd been fattening up 11 turkeys at Newhouse Farm for Christmas dinner. You may be thinking that Dick, James and I must have pretty gigantic appetites to get through that many turkeys, but most of the birds were going to be given away to friends and family as gifts, leaving the biggest bird to grace the Newhouse Farm Christmas dinner table. The geese had nothing to worry about, as goose was never on the Christmas menu in the Strawbridge household. But for the turkeys there was no escaping their fate. The day they'd meet their maker was edging ever nearer as cheesy Christmas carols started blaring out of the radio in the kitchen.

Fortunately my feathered friends were oblivious to the sound of Jingle Bells that rang the knell of their impending doom, but as ridiculous as it may seem I felt uncomfortable talking about what was going to happen to them within earshot of the turkeys. Perhaps this was an indication I'd spent a little too much time alone with animals in the countryside and I was in danger of losing my marbles. However it just felt wrong talking about dispatching, plucking and eating the turkeys if I was stood near their enclosure, with the birds still very much alive and kicking and gobbling happily away to their hearts content. When James and I would do the rounds of putting the animals to bed each evening I'd always lower my voice when we were discussing Christmas preparations whilst herding the turkeys into their shed, lest they should catch drift of any hint of what was to come and panic.

In hindsight I think I was just trying to put the fate of the the turkeys out of my mind for my own sense of well-being. Until now I'd only ever seen one animal at Newhouse Farm be dispatched, one of the ducks I'd incubated and raised from egg to adult, and that was a fairly intense experience. So the thought of killing and plucking 11 large turkeys one after the other was making me nervous and downright uncomfortable. I'd spent six months caring for these animals: feeding them, providing them with fresh bedding and water, and clearing up their foul smelling poop. When they first arrived I thought they were odd-looking dopey creatures with strange nobbly bits on their head, but over the months I'd grown fond of their peculiar antics and now I'd bristle if anyone referred to these beauties as ugly. After spending all this time making sure they had the best lives possible I definitely wanted to be involved in the process of dispatching them, but I was worried I was going to get upset when the moment came for them to be killed and wouldn't have the balls to see it through to the very end. I realised that if I had my way the turkeys would probably live and we'd all end up celebrating the festivities over a steaming nut roast. Yes, that would mean we'd have 11 plump turkeys running around eating us out of house and home for no purpose, but at least the turkeys wouldn't have to die for the sake of Christmas and the former vegetarian inside of me would be able to sleep easy at night.

The turkeys were too big to be killed in the same way as I'd seen my Indian Runner duck be dispatched earlier in the year. Because the duck's neck was thin James employed something called the 'neck stretching technique' to do away with it. This may sound like a type of yoga position designed to release tension in the neck after a stressful day in the office, but in reality it had a more deadly purpose. Without going into the sort of detail that would put my mum off her dinner, it's a swift and humane method of separating the vertebrae in the neck by hand. After a quick stretch and before you know it, Bob's your uncle and you've got yourself a dead duck. Simple as that. Well, so I've been told by Dick and James! According to Granny Strawbridge, who came to visit us at the farm just before the turkeys were due to be dispatched, neck stretching is quite a tricky technique to master, as she discovered to her horror the first time she tried it on an unwanted cockerel. But that's a story for another time...

Dispatching larger birds such as the turkeys was going to be a whole different kettle of fish. For months I'd been wondering why there was an upside down traffic cone suspended from a metal bar stool in one of the outbuildings at the farm. The traffic cone had its pointy tip cut off, and was lined on the inside with a couple of layers of bubble wrap. I knew that this strange contraption must have a purpose, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it could be. Was it a kind of potato planter? Maybe a trap for catching eels? How about a prototype seat for the compost loo? The truth was far more sinister. It was, in fact, the traffic cone of doom. A larger bird such as a turkey, goose or muscovy duck would be suspended upside down in the traffic cone, it's head and neck sticking out at the bottom. A pair of broomsticks would be placed on either side of the unfortunate bird's neck, and then squeezed together and twisted sharply, causing the bird to black out as it's neck was broken. This, I'd been assured by James and Dick, was the quickest and most humane method of dispatching the turkeys, as they'd be unconcious in a matter of seconds and dead in less than a minute. However I still felt a growing sense of dread as visions of the turkeys inside the traffic cone flitted through my overactive imagination.

Eventually the turkeys last day of living arrived, and I let them out of their shed with the Dali painting hanging on the outside for the very last time. At first I wasn't quite sure why James had decided to hang the Dali painting on the turkey shed, but I put it down to his artistic nature and eccentric streak. But now that I looked at the faded picture where in characteristic Dali fashion flesh and food seemed to merge into one form against a surreal background, the choice of picture seemed oddly fitting for the turkey enclosure. I emptied the remainder of the sack of turkey food into the feeder: today they could eat as much as they could manage... after all this was their last breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not wanting to wallow in sentimentality I briskly walked away from the turkey enclosure and busied myself with distracting activities elsewhere. But little did I realise that the turkeys had one last surprise in store for me before Christmas.

Story to be continued very soon...