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This tale about a practical joke gone awry dates at least to the early 1980s. Examples: Variations: In most versions of this legend it is the wife who ultimately pays the price for this practical joke meant to target someone else. She bears the brunt of the punishment meant for her husband, in effect once again suffering for his misdeeds. The husband has earned punishment by virtue of being drunk. Also, by implication, he's been neglecting his family, preferring to be out tying one on rather than spending time at home with them. In particular, versions specifying the poultry part having come from the Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey punctuate the seriousness of his misdeeds and the depths of his neglect. His sons are thus viewed as having engaged in a justifiable act of shaming rather than a random act of familial mischief. Likewise, the man's friends are seen as administering a deserved punishment (he's imposed on them once too often) instead of simply having given into a playful notion upon spying that turkey going to waste. The object of the prank is to trick the drunken sod into thinking he's been running around all night with his johnson hanging out. That he will quickly determine matters are more poultry than penile will not undo his moment of shock and (hopefully) his flash of realization that he makes a right fool of himself when he drinks. Or so goes the plan. Though usually this is a story about a practical joke taking out an innocent bystander, Brunvand collected an odd version where the act backfires on the perpetrator. It's the missus herself who positions the turkey neck in the drunken husband's pants. She later forgets she's put it there, then spots the cat having his nosh, faints, hits her head on the hearth, and thereby earns herself a fine array of cuts and bruises. We like this legend because it provides a valid use for a turkey neck, an item otherwise only suited for the stock pot. Also told in:
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