Have A Happy And Safe Thanksgiving, And For God’s Sake Use A Fork

With Leather will be updating sporadically tomorrow, but chances are we’ll be spending most of my second least-favorite holiday* with our families. And yes, by family I mean my girlfriend and my housecat.

To get you in the mood for American Thanksgiving, please enjoy this story of 105-pound competitive eater Sonya “Black Widow” Thomas, owner of 24 world eating records, eating almost an entire Thanksgiving turkey with her bare hands at the Wild Turkey 81 Eating World Championship on Tuesday. That’s 5.25 pounds of turkey in ten minutes, putting her ahead of luminaries like Eric “Badlands” Booker and “Crazy Legs” Conti and a cool $1,581 prize. She also won a championship belt and that bronze turkey in the picture. It has a removable cleaver.

A quote from the NY Daily News puts the event and the “Black Widow’s” strategy into perspective.

“It’s a mind game,” she said. “If you lose your focus and say you’re getting full and slow down, you lose.”

Nobody used utensils in the frenzied feast. [Badlands] Booker picked his entire bird up with one hand and violently gnawed, a fleck of meat stuck to his cheek.

“I just ripped the bird apart and ate the innards,” he said of his strategy. “I think I ate the wishbone by accident.”

You can watch a video of highlights from the event below, and it’s got a 50/50 chance of being awesome looking or disgusting.

https://player.ooyala.com/player.js?height=272&video_pcode=twZWQ6S37y9LvtgiLHQv56JeyH7s&embedCode=IzY2oxMzqGt_JvwMNc47ddrlDkCPthN_&width=485&deepLinkEmbedCode=IzY2oxMzqGt_JvwMNc47ddrlDkCPthN_

The best part is either “Lose Yourself” backing the video or the guy who tried to imagine he was a zombie in ‘The Walking Dead’ to get through it. Well, you are eating guts. Also hilarious is the strategy of “knowing the anatomy of a turkey” and trying to eat the dark meat first, because it’s juicier. Pretty sure the winner just ate everything as fast as she could.

*Columbus Day. Why do we still have that?

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