A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

much detail about, as it is an area shrouded in mystery, and better
that way.
But with the deepening of winter's grip on the prairie,
temperatures began to drop. The winds shrieked, and the ice
formed on the length of the pump handle. Every window in the
farmer's house was crystalled and etched, and out in the turkey
sheds, a terrible clatter arose as the turkeys scrambled to huddle
closer to the glowing bulb.
The strongest turkeys were the first to die. They elbowed the
weaker birds out of the way, until they could place themselves
directly against the hot bulb. Their comperes, unwilling to freeze,
gathered about them until they covered them. Inside the pile of
turkeys, the big birds smothered.
But that was not the end of the carnage. The weak birds then
crawled under their dead brethren to get closer to the light, and a
thousand birds climbed on top of them, too. And they too
suffocated.
In the morning, the farmer rose early to inspect the damage
done by the cold. HE had reason to suspect his losses were lighter
due to the lightbulb. But when he cracked open the door to the
shed, what he saw was a horror. A few dozen birds waddled stiffly
in the cold, yodeling their discomfort from the long frigid night.
But his focus was on the pile of over 800 dead birds in a heap
in the center of the shed, stacked ten high. Not a sound emerged
from the white feathered mountain. A thousand beady eyes stared
up, incriminatingly. And through the barnyard rose the awful
smell of a thousand unplucked, ungutted turkeys, slow roasted by