Gobble-gobble … Is this the way a turkey sounds?  Or does it cluck like the way a chicken clucks … like kuk-kuruk-kuku.  Or is that a Filipino yodel? 

I don’t really know. 

A long, long time ago, when I visited the world-famous San Diego Zoo in California, I’ve seen turkeys in their man-made natural habitat, but I didn’t hear any of them do the cluck-clucks nor the kuk-kuruk-kukos. 

What I’ve seen was that the male turkeys preen a lot and show off their brilliant feathers to the all drab-looking females scattered around … and they mount the females from behind, like a rooster would. 

So I assumed that turkeys must be of the fowl species.  But the male human species sometimes do mount from behind, too.  So, I don’t really know.

What I do know is that male turkeys are promiscuous. 

Because I observed that right after mounting a female, the male turkey nonchalantly walks away.  And minutes later, it’s preening again in front of another female … yes, for another mounting.

And I learned that day that the main preoccupation of male turkeys was to preen and show off and mount all the females in town … and I envied them.  Because that’s the kind of life I’d like to have in my second life on earth.

But, of course, like everything else in life, there are hazards of being a turkey. 

Before I forget, here’s my joke for the week . . .

And this is the merry joke I’ll tell to my friends.  It’s about what Little Johnny saw . . .  no, not at the zoo, but in the woods . . .

One day, Little Johnny saw his daddy’s car pass by the school playground and go into the woods.  Curious, he followed the car and saw Daddy and Aunt Jane in a passionate embrace.  Little Johnny found this so exciting that he could not contain himself as he ran home and started to tell his mother:

“Mommy, I was at the playground and I saw Daddy’s car go into the woods with Aunt Jane.  I went back to look and he was giving Aunt Jane a big kiss, then he helped her take off her shirt.  Then Aunt Jane helped Daddy take his pants off, then Aunt Jane …

At this point, Mommy cut him off and said, “Johnny, this is such an interesting story, suppose you save the rest of it for our Thanksgiving dinner.  I want to see the look on Daddy’s face when you tell it tonight.” (The story’s conclusion is at the end of this column . . .)

Come Thanksgiving Day, you can end featherless and roasted golden brown on a platter, laid on one of America’s dinner tables, prayed over, and then consumed by the whole family that came together for the sole purpose of gobbling you up.

Come to think of it, I wonder why the Indians of ancient America chose the promiscuous turkey to give to the Puritans to feast on in their first celebration of Thanksgiving Day.

Could it be that the American Indians, who showed the ignorant Puritans how to farm corn and how to cook and eat turkey, were really making fun of them, perhaps saying among themselves: “Let’s give these Puritans the promiscuous turkey to eat, so they’ll loosen up a little?  Then we’ll show them how to smoke the hallucinogenic PEACE PIPE … and then later, show them, too, how we, Indians, do Thanksgiving parties.”

It must have been quite a party that first Thanksgiving Day.  There must have been a lot of whooping and jumping around the campfire and going in pairs behind bushes.  And it must have been a happy co-existence between the Puritans and the Indians after that. 

The relationship soured after more Puritans came and the land grabbing begun.  The more land the Puritans grabbed, the more land they want.

Then came Manifest Destiny (the slaughtering of the American Indians), and their forced relocations to reservations, and as y’all know, this is one of the ignoble chapters of American history.

Come to think of it, too, why do we, Fil-Ams, celebrate Thanksgiving Day?  It’s not even in our culture.  We are not even descendants of the Puritans or of the Indians.  What we ought to be celebrating should be called, Arrival Day.  You know, the day we arrived here in America.

That’s the EVENT that we should be thankful for.  Like the Puritans, America for us, was the Promised Land.

And I consider myself blessed that I am here.   And that my family is here.  And that through hard work and perseverance, my wife and I pursued and captured the promise of this land, that we call the American Dream.

And I am thankful that my children grew up here and are now part of mainstream America, thinking like one, walking the walk and talking the talk of the natives.

Yes, I am thankful, I am blessed, and because of that, I celebrate NOT the Puritans’ Thanksgiving Day, but my Arrival Day.

And when friends come to my dinner table this year to partake on the devouring of my oven-roasted PROMISCUOUS turkey, we’ll drink red wine.  And y’all know how it is in celebrating important days of our lives: We toast each other, we drink up and the more you drink, the more you get merry.  And the more you get merry, the TALKS and the DYOKS get merrier.

And here’s the concluding episode of Little Johnny’s story . . .

At the Thanksgiving dinner table, Mommy asked Little Johnny to tell his story: “I was at the playground and I saw Daddy’s car go into the woods with Aunt Jane.  I went back to look and he was giving Aunt Jane a big kiss, then he helped her take off her shirt.  Then Aunt Jane helped Daddy take his pants off …

“Then Aunt Jane and Daddy started doing the same thing that Mommy and Uncle Bill used to do when Daddy was away in the Army . . .”

Gobble-gobble.  Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!!!  JJ