Big Bird: A Thanksgiving Tale

Every year, I go to the same farmer's market and ask for an enormous turkey, "at least eight kilos! Twelve would be better!" I explain we need the bird for the American holiday, Thanksgiving, and that we're having between ten and fifteen guests. Every year, the farmer gives me a bird that, although organic, juicy and delicious, weighs less than eight kilos. Well, once we had one that came in at 11.73 kilos.
 With plenty of stuffing, pints of cranberry-orange relish, two batches of corn muffins, multiple vegetables, pies, we've always had enough to go around and enough for turkey sandwiches the next day. But this year, we were having sixteen guests, maybe more, and I stood on my toes and begged for a bigger bird. The farmer looked down at the pathetic American: "Well, perhaps ten to thirteen kilos," he said, as if he wished I would go away, and then, as always, the night before Thanksgiving, I went through my usual tortures: What if he forgets? What if my husband and I go there at 7:30 in the morning, the way we always do, and the man says he forgot? What if we have to go to the supermarket and get a frozen bird?
I tossed and turned.
At 7:30 the next morning, we went to the market, trundling our little red shopping cart behind us, me grumbling my obsessive worries about the turkey, my husband trying to get me to make a list of everything we hadn't yet purchased and needed.
We saw the farmer and waved. His wife started looking for the bird, and she poked around in the back of their stand long enough for visions of horrible frozen turkeys to start dancing in my head.
With a leer, the farmer lobbed a gigantic thing up onto the counter. Almost 16 kilos, and the most expensive bird we've ever purchased, at approximately 140 euros. 
I could barely lift it.

One very heavy bird (35 pounds, American)

Between the two of us, my husband and I got the thing into the red shopping cart. We had no room for the vegetables and potatoes. 
All the way home we wrestled with the dread possibility: What if that thing didn't fit in our oven? 
"We  could cut off the legs," my husband offered. "It won't be pretty, but . . ."
The thought of an amputated turkey just broke my heart, but I agreed to his solution--anything was better than a cold, uncooked turkey and sixteen unhappy guests. 
The bird didn't fit in our turkey pan! Crisis!
It did fit in our large baking pan, the one that fills a whole shelf on the oven. Barely. With its legs almost pressing against the glass.

Pre-trussing. Oh, did I tie those legs together

For the first time in all the decades I've prepared Thanksgiving turkey, every bit of stuffing actually fit into the bird. I trussed up the opening the way you'd lace a pair of very large boobs into a Bavarian dirndl, and tied up the legs the way a sadist might fetter a victim. I closed the oven door and baked the bird for a whole six hours. 
Two strong men were needed to carry the majestic beast to the table, and we feasted for hours.

The bird that didn't fit in the turkey pan .

A little bit of turkey skin is still stuck to the back of my oven, though.