I was in college and had come home to Connecticut for Thanksgiving. As always, my mother had planned the meal down to the last detail. She'd roasted the turkey the night before and set it out on our screened-in porch to cool. When Thanksgiving morning came, it was everyone to their post—whipping potatoes, peeling turnips, setting the table with the good silverware.
It was in the middle of this whirl of activity that my father noticed our Airedale, Arnold, and the neighborhood Doberman, Princess, slinking off the porch, guilty. They had eaten our entire turkey, right down to the bones. Now this could have wreaked havoc with our expectations for the day, and for a few moments it did. We watched those two settle down on the front lawn for a nap, overstuffed and happy, while we (stranded in an era before the days of 24/7 supermarkets) resigned ourselves to the thought of no turkey on Thanksgiving.
