The+Life+of+a+Turkey

Our story begins with the largest cell of all: an egg. An egg, unlike a normal cell, is basically many layers of various substances with confusing scientific names all dedicated to the protection of the embryo. The egg in question is the egg of a turkey.

The egg broke open with a satisfactory crack. Not against a wall, or the pavement, or a mixing bowl, but deep in the woods. It had not been thrown by some random pre-pubescent teenage, but had instead been cracked open by the half-developed beak of a blob of flesh that would one day resemble a turkey.

The blob cried out in earnest, and its siblings helped drag it from the scattered rubble that had been its home for over 9 months. It took several weeks for it to learn to walk, and several more to be able to walk far.

After the turkey had lived much of his life, and, indeed, somewhat beyond his life expectancy, he was diagnosed with fatal salmonella. One day, when he knew his time had come, he bid his friends and family goodbye, and crawled out into the woods to die. He was deep in the forest when, simultaneously, his brain was tired of living for so long, and gave the body the order to die, and as the cells in his immune system shut down, the salmonella took over, and, from out of the forest came a shot from the gun of Dan Bob Jackie, which careened into the turkey's heart, shattering his aeortic valve.

Dan picked up the corpse, and, with expert care, extracted the bullet. He buried the bullet under the moss of a nearby tree, and prayed for the turkey. He then brought it home to his wife, Sally Mary Jackie. She plopped the turked into the oven. The celebrating salmonella realized all too late that they were goners, and the flames of hell engulfed them.

That evening, which was Thanksgiving, Dan, Sally, Lilly, and Bob Jackie sat down around the table, gave thanks, and ate.

Dan's fork entered the turkey leg. His knife slid back and forth across its surface, slipping in deeper with every round, severing the leg into two pieces. His fork lifted to his mouth; his jaw muscle flexed, clamping his teeth onto the solid metal, separating the turkey chunk from the outside world. Ravenous bacteria lept off his enamel and devoured the carbohydrates on the turkey, simultaneously excreting acid. Saliva flowed from Dan's salivary glands, and began to beat the acid into oblivion. Also, the saliva fought the starch until it was significantly weaker. By this time, the throat had begun to pull in the bolus of turkey. The bacteria wept hopelessly as their meal was pulled down the esophagus.

The stomach acids were playing cards when it happened. The alarm rang. Apparently, not all the salmonella had been killed, and they had some chemical digestion to do anyway. But the salmonella first. They saw the survivors walking down the bolus machine guns ready to go. They pulled out their own automatics and began to blast the salmonella. They were professionals, so they did their job fast and satisfactorily. Then they began to work on the hot shot proteins in the bolus. They too soon bit the dust. The stomach acids then gave the order for the remainder of the bolus to move into the small intestine - gang territory.

A bit of introduction to the gangs. The three main ones are Bile, Nuclease, and Amylase. Other minor gangs exist too, but their names are unimportant here. Anyway, the gangs took care of the surviving molecules, and their remnants were left to the scavengers. One scavenger's name was Alan, and he was a master of his work. He would slink to the top of nearby villi to find his meal, grab it with his flagellum, and nonchalantly sneaked back home. There he pushed the food up against his cell membrane and waited for the inevitable.

Inside of Alan, his organelles were going to work. Expert vacuoles raced to the contact point, and a small gap opened in the membrane. The vacuoles dragged in the scavenged food and carried it off to a lysosome. The lysosome broke it down and sent it to his favorite companies: Mike Mito's Energy Plant, and Elizabeth's Endoplasmic Reticulum. Mike Mito was a nice guy, he just liked to use energy for his own needs: making more of it. He took in the amino acids that Alan had eaten and turned them into energy for the whole cell. The nucleus would be proud. Elizabeth decided to save the amino acids for later, just in case Randy Ribosome, her top protein producer, ran low on material.

I hope the turkey's passage from embryo to endoplasmic reticulum has helped you somewhat understand the digestive system and the inner functions of cells. Thank you.