For some reason (like, um, my own stupidity?) this entry was never posted on Thanksgiving Day.

Can we pretend that it was because of some serious technical difficulties and not just due to my stupidity though?

PLEASE?!?

Oh, fine. Who was I going to fool anyway? The 'technical difficulties' were caused mainly by the fact that I forgot to press 'publish.'

But please keep in mind that for someone like me, who has been known to remotely blow up computers by merely sending out a few e-mails, things could have been far, far worse.

Anyway, so here, especially to speed up your post-Thanksgiving digestion, the Post That Almost Wasn't And If It Wasn't You Would've Been No Worse Off For It I'm Sure.

So please, just for today (and it's not like I ask it of you EVERY day. Just every time I post. So that would be like only every other day), pretend to humour me. Besides, how often is it that someone wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving five days after the fact?

Exactly.

So here goes:

To everyone in the United States: Happy, happy Day of Overindulgence... I mean... Thanksgiving!

This fine day on which you commemorate what must be one of the biggest real estate bargains of all time: The Pilgrims swapping a few bottles of liquor with the Native Americans and getting a miserly bit of land in return. (I mean, really. They could've at LEAST thrown in a bit of Canada as well, but... oh, never mind.)

JUST kidding! Of COURSE I know that the Native Americans received only one bottle of liquor as payment for the country! (But, what the history books so callously omit is that, dammit, it was GOOD liquor!) And then a turkey was caught, plucked (and the feathers used by the Pilgrim women to sew what ended up being very fashion forward headdresses for the Natives), divided and amicably devoured by all around a rock somewhere in Massachussetts, before they proceeded to eat each other.

And voila, Thanksgiving was born.

But luckily this post isn't really about me sharing my very accurate (so accurate it's almost deadly, isn't it?) knowledge of American history.

Alas, no.

But if it IS something historical you're after, fear not, for I'm about to delve into my very own sordid past to explain to you why I don't particularly care for turkey in any form, be it dead, stuffed and covered in gravy, or very much alive and making that alarming sound.

Yeah, I didn't dub it the turkey bastard for nothing.

Ah, but before all of you turkey lovers out there get all defensive, consider this: My first encounter with the Meleagris Gallopavo (Thank you, Google!) species took place during my fragile formative years on my maternal grandparents' farm where my sisters and I were mercilessly stalked and chased by a roaming flock of turkeys (or rafter of turkeys. Specify, Google! Specify!) whenever we dared to leave the confines of the house to play out in the sprawling gardens.

The turkeys would have none of it, though, and in what ended up being a horrifying role reversal, we, the innocent human children, ended up cooped up in the house while the turkey bastards continued to strut around, their wattled necks jiggling with every smug step.

Ghastly birds! Foul fowl! They don't call bad movies "turkeys" for nothing!

In conclusion, I leave you with the following anecdote received from her. She sent this to me after I wrote this.

I want to share it so that if some of you happen to belong to the same CTbT group (Children Terrorised by Turkeys), I can only hope that you find some comfort in this story, if only it is to know that you are not alone in your trauma:

"Another friend of mine told me that his uncle owned a turkey farm. He described, one time when he was about 8, walking across the farm and realizing that a whole herd (flock?) of turkeys was following him. He stopped, and whirled around to look at them.

Because turkeys, like many birds, have their eyes on the sides of their heads, they all stopped and turned their heads to either side. They, of course, were trying to see him better, but to him, it looked like they were pretending that they hadn't been following him and were pretending to not see him. "Nope, no one here was following you, doo-dee-doo.. just out looking for some seed... nothing to see here... just keep walking" Each time he continued walking, they'd follow him again, and the cycle was repeated over & over, making him completely paranoid." - Maggie.

P.S. Once again, I'm wreaking havoc elsewhere.

Updated P.P.S. I see that I'm not the only one who sometimes forgets to press "publish". Shall we start a Bloggers Unable To Blog support group too?