Welcome to Turkeypocolypse! – SPIKE & MIKE

Here we go again, my BTR friends. ‘Tis the season to be squeezing.’ Time for the gratitude attitude. Time for families to be together. Time for loved ones to be face to face, celebrate, and reconnect. Time for histories to be re-lived and memories to be made. Time for…

Mike breaks in, “What are you squawking about, birdbrain? Have you been watching too many Hallmark Channel movies? Been in my closet looking at old photo albums? Chewing on the scented pine cones grandma gave me years ago?

Wake up, stop eating pieces of gingerbread and roasted chestnuts from the bottom of the memory box, and get a grip! It’s 2020, the Covid era, nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all video conferencing each other from our phones, computers, and tablets by the way of Facetime, Skype, or Zoom. The closest we’re getting to one another is the touch screen and speakerphone. Reminiscing will be more like; do you remember who you had last contact with outside your home or when was your last Covid-19 test or do you have enough toilet paper?”

I cackle, “Dude, I’m trying to help everybody forget 2020 and all you do is throw it in their faces as if it were pumpkin pie. I still want people to believe in the magic called ‘the holiday season.’ But, they should start by changing the name of Thanksgiving to something more fitting like turkeypocolypse, turkey-gedden, or gobble/wobble day.”

Mike slaps his forehead and says, “That’s plucking hilarious! No matter what the name, it’s going to be nothing but fluids, food, and froth until my pants button pops, goes flying across the room, and almost puts grandma’s eye out! Let me ask you something, Spyke. What do you call your cousin’s the day after Thanksgiving?”

I squabble, “Don’t know dude, maybe an Uber, leftovers, or late for his own party?”

Mike replies, “No, you funky-colored chicken, you call ‘em pardoned and blessed!” He walks away laughing as I just sit on my perch, lower my head, and think about Tom, my kin, on his sad upcoming day.

I look back at last year when Mike allowed Tom to soak up some sun beside me at the pool before showing me what ‘sharing the hot seat’ in the kitchen really meant. I pecked out this poem, only to his dismay. I really wish I could tell him in some other way:

O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
How lovely are thy feathers.
O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
I wish I could tell you something better.
Humans celebrate Turkey Day by putting your carcass on display.
O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
You thought that Mike had friends who came to greet you.
O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
They just gathered here to eat you!
O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
His biker family is all together.
O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
They’re all a bunch of fickled feathers.
O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
Being in the family is so fab.
Mike prays they stay out of rehab.
O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
They’ll drink away your memory.
Then pass out from food coma serenity.
O cousin Tom
O cousin Tom
In less than a month, they’ll use you again.
Cooking your brother from the other mother and chanting Christmas obscenities.

Mike walks in and catches the last of my poem. He blurts out, “Aww Spyke, that touches my heart when you talk about family. It really means something to me, but let me ask you, what does it mean when a bunch of them run across the road a couple of times?”

I scratch my head with one wing and answer, “Dude, I don’t know. Maybe they were lost, scared or blind?”

Mike babbles, “No, peanut breath. They were just proving one thing; they weren’t chicken! Maybe you’ll get this one. What do they call the quickest ones that run across the road?”

I think for a second then cackle, “I know, they’re the ones that made it through this fowl and awful holiday. I call them lucky!”

Mike rolls his eyes and says, “No, my little buddy, just fast food! Speaking of fast, I think you’re fading and in need of some wind therapy. But definitely not the convection type!”

I squawk, “You’re right, Mike! Pick my feathered ass up and plop me in the truck. Get your knees under the keys, my wings in the wind of the sunroof, and its wheels rolling down the road.”
—SPYKE