It has become fashionable in recent years for families to gorge on a holiday concoction known as “Turducken,” a combination of a turkey stuffed with a duck, which is in turn stuffed with a chicken.

But what if you can’t afford three of the holiday’s traditional birds? What if you can’t even afford one? What if you can’t afford a home and have to settle for squatting under a sheet of plastic strung between two poles in an abandoned industrial lot?

Then you would be Harvey Shank and his daughter Vanna, two plucky indigents who aren’t letting their social marginalization keep them from enjoying the spirit of the holidays.

“‘Cause of the schedule we worked out where we eat every third day, we were going to miss Thanksgiving,” Harvey said as he exfoliated his arms with a hunk of tree bark. “Van was pretty upset, and I said ‘well don’t just talk about it, go catch us some food.’ And wouldn’t you know she came back an hour later with the plumpest squirrel you ever saw.”

But Vanna didn’t stop there. Spurred on by the holiday atmosphere and the prospect of starving to death, Vanna set out again and returned with a loveable stray mutt.

“That was a beautiful dog,” Harvey said wistfully. “He was like one of the family. So I felt like I was doing him a favor when I chucked him on the head with a piece of concrete.”

While Harvey skinned the dog and squirrel, Vanna set out in search of what would be the piece de resistance: a fat, dumpster-fed possum.

At first Harvey didn’t know how they would eat all three. “It was more food than we’d had in two weeks. But I thought, Hell, it’s the holidays, let’s splurge a little.”
Recalling a cooking show he’d seen on t.v. while in the waiting room at the free clinic, Harvey stuffed the squirrel into the possum, then into the dog.

After roasting the beast for several hours over two bic lighters they’d stolen off a corpse, Harvey and Vanna sat down to a banquet they will likely remember for years to come, especially given the serious gastronomic distress the disease-laden amalgam is sure to cause them.

But Harvey doesn’t dwell on the negative. “We don’t worry about what tomorrow will bring. We enjoy the moment.” For someone who will likely be dead before sunup, that’s the best attitude one could possibly have.