Page 9 - Publishing Inspiration Christmas Card 2023

continued talking when another turkey dressed in a sweater, walked by, then
another, then another. John counted five in all.
He tried not to act too surprised, but by the time the last one walked by,
he couldn’t contain his curiosity.
“Um, those turkeys are wearing sweaters,” John said to David.
David nodded. “Yea. It’s getting cold.”
“But sweaters on turkeys?” John said.
“Well,” David replied, “one morning, a few weeks ago, we found the
turkeys were all dead.”
“Dead?” John questioned to himself as he looked over at the turkeys
scratching around for food.
“We were devastated, of course,” David continued.
“We had looked forward to a batch of baby turkeys in the spring. Granny, who
grew up during the depression, was not about to let anything go to waste.
‘Those turkeys have lots of good feathers,’ she said. She insisted we pluck
them to use their feathers in some pillows. So, we did.
“Later that evening, when we came home from work, we found the
turkeys walking around. It didn’t take us long to realize they had gotten into
some fermented grain and had just been drunk. Since they were all plucked, we
were afraid they would freeze to death when it got cold. But Granny said it
wasn’t going to happen on her watch, and she knitted sweaters for all of them.
She got them done just in time, too, because the weather soon turned cold.”
They talked a bit longer, and as John headed on his way, he took one
more glance at the turkeys. His friends were definitely wrong. Rural life
wasn’t going to be dull.

6