After meeting with his lawyers this week to finalize his will, local turkey Albert Gobbleneck met me at a local diner to discuss pre-Thanksgiving stressors. “Ugh, this semester is killing me,” he said, while rummaging through his backpack for his vape pen. “Sorry. I’m just so stressed out. I have so much to do — huge deadline next Thursday. Haha.” Just as the waitress came over to tell him he couldn’t vape inside, he shoved it back in his bag and ordered a black coffee and 29 scrambled eggs. “I’m bulking up for — well, ya know,” he said, drawing his wing across his neck and rolling his eyes back into his little bird skull. 

Gobbleneck has had an extremely busy week preparing for his upcoming death. Thursday, Nov. 28, is Thanksgiving, and Gobbleneck knows he has to get his shit together before he heads off for his final trip to the grocery store. 

“So, what kind of stuff do turkeys usually do to prep for Thanksgiving?” I asked. 

“Other than the usual death stuff like writing wills and saying goodbye? This time of year is always wild — the turkeys are all really stressed out. Laundry to do, growth hormones to finish, butter to ball. Everyone is working really hard during the day to get ready for Thanksgiving, but on the weekends they’re so pent up they just have to party. Turkey parties get crazy around now. Over the weekend, I went to the Kappa Kappa Turkey’s formal. It was wild,” Gobbleneck said, shoveling eggs into his beak. “I saw two turkeys making out against a wall in a basement like we were all about to die or something.”

Later, I sat down with another turkey from Gobbleneck’s inner circle. “We had to reschedule coffee; he was just too busy,” said Jibbly Fattclump, a close friend of Gobbleneck, showing me a text that read “Rain check on coffee? Got a big death on Thursday.”

“It’s just a part of life for us,” Fattclump continued. “We all know what’s coming; it just depends on whose year it is to go to Thanksgiving.” 

This Thanksgiving, Gobbleneck will be attending his final Thanksgiving at the residence of a local Walla Walla family. If you wish to see his final form, grainy photos will be posted on Aunt Julianne’s Facebook.