Turkey Testicle Festival

For "Thanksgiving Eve," we went out the 26th Annual Turkey Testicle Festival in Huntley, Illinois. I was imagining a dimly lit bar, low attendance, and strange antics, but it turned out to be well-attended by a wide range of people (well, in ages at least, since I could count the number of minorities on my hands), at least one decent cover band, testicular jokes and general immaturity kept to a minimum, and a live turkey!

We shared a cup of deep fried turkey testicles. It didn't taste bad--it was like fried chicken nuggets, with almost a spongy kind of texture. If you don't think about it too much, it's totally edible, but I overthought it and couldn't get past a bite per nut.

This giant man stuck out among the crowd--that vest! He was getting some beer near us and Nik asked him if he hunted the animal for its fur himself. The man started talking about beavers being unable to chomp on wood because trees are getting cut down, so their teeth overgrow. His point seemed to be that there are a lot of beavers out there who are unable to live a meaningful beaver life if their teeth don't function properly, so they are trapped and made into properly lined fur vests with deer hoof buttons and an interior pocket for flasks. Properly justified or not, the vest was undeniably remarkable. It was soft; I touched it when he wasn't looking.

Apparently there was some bet that had to do with when the turkey was going relieve itself where, or something like that, but we missed out on that event. For some reason it was facing a crate full of live ducks (?) and it was guarded by a turkey-like lady. I wanted to show how the turkey was huge, but the lady isn't helping. Please refer to the litter on the ground for proper scale.

I was satisfied with our trip after getting the picture of the vest-man and seeing the turkey. We convinced Nik that there was no point in getting trashed in Huntley when we needed to return to Chicago, and that there was no more reason to be there since a crappy cover band took over the stage. I bought everyone Lion Bars at Meijer (and picked up other things along the way and used their clean, non-port-o-potty bathroom) and pushed Nik around, who was thisclose to vomiting.