contact: Jeff Matthews

Hey, Honey, I Hatched the Kids.


I've just read in the paper that a woman has used a turkey baster to inseminate herself. That's no yolk, folks. This woman was intimate with a $2.98 kitchen utensil usually used for the somewhat less romantic purpose of moistening the roasting flesh of meleagris gallopavo with its own juices. It seems to me that of all the things you can do to yourself with instruments normally used to do things to birds, making the baster with two backs is only marginally more pleasant than being beheaded by a hatchet or having all your feathers plucked out by machine.

There was a picture in the paper—of the woman, I mean, not the baster. (It probably rolled over and went to sleep before the photographers got there.) She's not bad looking, either. I'm a drumstick man, myself, but she had some white meat on her that would stop your heart —or at least engorge your wattles. But making whoopee with a turkey baster? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. In any event, I don't think I want to go over to these people's house for Thanksgiving. Have some more gravy? Noooooooooo, thank you! Good grief, how'd you like to have your roughneck friends at school find out that you were conceived like that? Hey, bird-brain, wanna fight? What's the matter? Come on, I know you're not a chicken!

What did they do, put a little romantic music on? Turkey in the Straw? Ah, you say, as you gobble sweet nothings into her ear —if that's what those little holes are in back of her eyes— my little chickadee, you look so beautiful with that cranberry sauce in your hair. Who does your make-up, Farmer MacGregor? If you ask me, this new-fangled orchestration of love's old sweet song is strictly for the birds. Aren't there better ways to get inseminated? Whatever happened to the old romantic stand-bys such as the battery-acid syringe? What do we even know about turkey basters? Are they gentle lovers? Or typical wham-bam thank-you hen male-chauvinist pigs? (Hmmm, my metaphors are drying up. Where's that baster?) Hey, buster, I mean, baster, what's the hurry?! More like a road-runner baster, if you ask me! And what of his feelings? Do basters worry about inadequacy —about, uh, you know— 'basting' a little too soon? Do they smoke afterwards? And if so, shouldn't there be a smoke detector somewhere in this whole sordid affair? —or at least in the oven? Do basters have encounter groups? Or show up on talk shows featuring "Women who love rotten basters"? These are just some of the questions I think we should agonize over, or, at least, not worry too much about as we contemplate not only Man's inhumanity to Man, but Woman's inbirdity to Baster.

And did her husband find out? If so, how did he feel about being had by a turkey baster? At least the wife could have had a decent sense of metaphorical accuracy and found a cuckoo baster! O! what lines in all the morally depraved tales of cupidity and faithless human love can compare with the chilling ring of, "It's my husband! Quick, get back in the kitchen drawer!" Anyway, this woman now has real problems. She has this uncontrollable urge to sit on eggs.

But, you ejaculate, Geoffrey Chaucer, himself, in 1382, penned a 700-line poem in rhyme royal called The Parliament of Fowls, in which the poet dreams that he comes to a hillside where all the fowls have gathered at the bidding of Nature to choose their mates. Nature declares that the royal tercel eagle has first choice, and he chooses the lovely formel eagle. Then, two tercels of lower rank contest the claim, one declaring that he has loved her longer, and the other that he loves her more truly. The other birds begin a lively dispute over the three claims, until Nature finally refers the choice to the formel eagle, who asks for a year to make up her mind. The other birds quickly choose their mates, sing a rondel and fly away. Yes, this is true, and I salute your eagle-like perspective, your hawk-like grasp, your owl-like understanding, your albatross-like wingspan, curlew-like beak and moorhen-like ability to keep the top of your nest above water —but, above all, your unbelievable parrot-like willingness to copy great amounts of filler out of the encyclopedia. But, notice, she said she wanted to think it over. She didn't say, hey, you turkeys, hand me that baster.

Say, anyone for leftovers?

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