Victorian Thanksgiving Turkey Greeting Card with Harvest Basket

Why is this magnificently iridescent dark-green turkey lying flat on its back with its clawed feet lashed together and tethered to a wicker basket? Because it has clearly already lost the November lottery — its crimson, fleshy head drooping to one side in the eternal repose of the definitively deceased. The artist R.J. Wealthy (yes, that's the signature, and yes, the irony of a man named Wealthy immortalizing dead poultry is lost on no one) has rendered every scale-like feather with the kind of obsessive detail usually reserved for Renaissance saints, which somehow makes the whole thing MORE unsettling. A small basket brimming with bright red berries sits beside the corpse like a garnish, because apparently the best way to express 'Happy Thanksgiving!' is staging a still life that doubles as a crime scene, accessorized with a single limp stalk of what appears to be celery lying at the bottom of the frame like a forgotten alibi.