'Stuffing the Turkey'

‘Stuffing the Turkey’

This is a true story about an incident that occurred with my former husband.

Some people are not going to believe this story and that’s fine. When I told people that knew my ex-husband this story, every one of them said “well, that sounds just like something he would do!”

The hospital had taken pictures of him but he now has those pictures. I have tried many times to talk him into giving me them but he says “Are you kidding! I know you would show them to everyone you could!”
He was right!


I had just cleaned the 35lb turkey and put it in a pan; I never stuff it because of the bacteria issue.
While the oven was getting hot, I went into the living room and sat down for a few minutes.
I saw my husband going into the kitchen and I told him “no nibbling on anything!”
About 15 minutes passed and all of a sudden, there came a terrible crash from the kitchen.
I got up and started for the kitchen and my husband came running into the dining room with the damn turkey on his head!

After I was able to pick my mouth up from the floor I could see he was in distress because he was slamming into the walls and I could hear him screaming from inside the turkey, “Help me, I can’t breathe” but it was so muffled I wasn’t sure that was what he said.

Once my brain processed what I was seeing and I hate to admit this, but I started laughing. Big, lumberjack type laughs until screaming from the pain in my stomach!

There he was running around the dining room, crashing into the walls and the turkey’s legs were flopping up and down and the wings were flapping in the breeze.
I felt like I was in a Stephen King movie and expected Stephen to walk in any minute!

Once I was finally was able to calm my husband down for a minute so I tried getting it off his head. I pulled; lifted, shifted it from side to side, put oil around the edges, then butter and nothing was budging it. At this point, I was getting pretty worried because he was not getting much air.

Realizing that his neck was swelling from all the pushing I knew I needed to get him to the emergency room. Stuffing (no pun intended…well maybe just a little), him into the car we headed down the road.

The hospital was fifteen miles down the road and for both of us it was the longest ride of our lives!

We had gone about five miles and I started hearing honking, yelling, and people waving at me as we went by.
Looking over at some of these cars the people had their mouths open not believing what they are seeing. A few were laughing so hard I was afraid they might get into an accident.
From their point of view, it must have been a very surreal site to be sure. A woman driving with a man sitting in the passenger seat with a turkey stuck on his head! Reaching into the back seat, I grabbed a blanket we kept in there for emergencies. Throwing it over his head, we continued down the road.

Finally, I reached the ER. We all headed into the hospital…me, my husband, the turkey, and the people that followed us on the highway.

Did you know that you do not have to sign papers and no questions asked if you have a turkey on your head? Good to know.

They took my husband back right away, he is thrashing around, the turkey’s legs and wings are flopping up and down, and I am doing everything not to laugh again. We had enough people laughing.

The doctor came in right away, he did the same thing I did, pushed, pulled, shifted, lifted, sliced, and diced and that turkey was not coming off.

Meanwhile my husband had to be given a sedative to quiet him down and the doctor was very concerned because he was not getting air, they could not even give him oxygen, what with the turkey sitting on his face and all!

There was also quite a commotion in the waiting area because all of my husband’s “road fans” were there wanting to know how he was doing and they were getting quite noisy.

To make matters worse, employees from different floors had heard about the man with the turkey stuck on his head and they were coming down to see this most unusual site!

After a while, they had to call security and they told people “whoever didn’t need to be in the ER, please go back to where you belong.”
I kid you not, cameras were going off, and people were picking their mouths up from the floor. Others were holding their stomachs because they were laughing so hard.
It was a very chaotic scene and it looked like something out of a comedy series.

Meanwhile, back in the exam room, they had taken x-rays and the doctor tells me “yep, he’s got a turkey stuck on his head alright!”
I replied, “No…………ya think? They pay you how much money to tell me that?”

We were talking about an orthopedic surgeon at this point. The doctor went on to say that, they were going to take him up to the OR to remove the turkey. I could only think, “What is wrong with that statement!”
The doctor was afraid that his air supply was being cut off. Wanting to fire back another “ya think”, I kept my mouth shut.

They wheeled him up to surgery and an hour later the turkey was off and my husband was going to be ok. He had cut marks all over his face where he was scraping along the bone in the turkey trying to get it off his head and what looked like hickey marks from sucking in to get air.

Once he woke up and was coherent, the doctor asked him “why would you do something so stupid?”
My husband replied, “It was done on ‘Friends’ and ‘Mr. Bean’ so I thought I would try it” The doctor replied in disbelief,
“I have been a surgeon for over 30 years and I have seen many things that were strange, but never have I seen such a stupid stunt as this!”

Later, as we were leaving the doctor asked us “would you like to have the turkey back? It’s not too late to cook him.”