A Thanksgiving pit turkey story with a surprise ending

Once upon a time a teenager was forced into manual labor. He was tasked with digging a nice deep square hole in the "hardest ground on the face of the earth".

He finished his task with much grumbling right on time, the day before Thanksgiving.

He was so glad to be done digging that he didn't even mind when he was told to fill it up again...

...with wood and fire. The fire was fed a steady diet of wood for over three hours. The teenager's mother suspected he also used an abundance of lighter fluid and maybe even her missing gallon of hand sanitizer.

Finally the fire in the nice square hole burned down to red hot coals.

Two foil wrapped turkeys were caged in wire mesh and lowered onto a rack in the nice square hole.

The nice square hole was covered with a piece of steel roofing and the teenager was made to shovel all of the dirt that came out of the hole onto the metal roofing. That kid was glad when he was sent to bed (or more likely out to spend time with his friends).

The next morning the teenager was sent out with a shovel once more. His crazy parents wanted him to move all that dirt once again.

...those stupid turkeys were still in the nice square hole.

They turkey's were released from their wire mesh cages (they didn't get very far).

The turkeys were so tender, juicy and delicious that the teenager forgave his parents for making him dig that stupid hole.

Now for the surprise ending...

The next Thanksgiving the teenager was on the African Continent in Mozambique.

It was the rainy season in Mozambique; it rained constantly. The teenagers father and mother had, in a small way, been sharing his experience as it had rained for days and days at home also. Luckily the rain stopped. The day before Thanksgiving, the teenager's father decided to cook pit turkeys yet again (the nice square hole was already dug after-all).

The father filled the nice square hole with wood covered in lighter fluid. He lit and fed the fire for three hours. The teenager's mother though the father might burn their trees down as the flames seemed to stretch higher and higher.

The fire burned for three hours filling nice square hole with red hot coals. The father put two foil wrapped turkeys in wire mesh cages on a rack in the hole. He covered the hole with the metal roofing and covered the roofing with all of the dirt.

The next morning, the father shoveled the dirt away and removed the metal roofing to retrieve the turkeys.

While the father was preparing to unwrap a turkey, the mother walked into the house and said "What is that smell?" The father explained that he had made a rub with a special blend of herbs but the mother worried that herb blend was labeled "Death and Decay".

When the foil wrapping was removed to reveal raw turkey, the father could no longer live in denial as the stench of rotting carcass blended with hickory coals permeated the house maybe even the neighborhood.

It was then the father figured out what he wished he would have realized the day before. A three hour fire may dry out a nice square hole and produce plenty of red hot coals but the moisture in the ground surrounding a sealed nice square hole will condense on metal roofing and put those red hot coals out. This warm cozy environment provides the perfect condition for 12 hours of bacterial growth and probably fatal botulism.

The father never had the heart to pit cook again.