Turkey Jive

For some people, Thanksgiving is a time to gather with family, friends and pets around a table laden with mouth-watering treats and give thanks for the bounty, or at least the high points, of the past year. For others, it's a time to drink beer and watch football.

Regardless of how you celebrate this very American holiday, we're betting there are certain things without which it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving. So we hit the winter-nipped streets of Corvallis to find out just what those holiday essentials might be and what people were most thankful for this year.

It isn't Thanksgiving without …

"Turkey and family."

Keren Baldwin, barista, The Beanery

"Rain."

Roberta Sperling, Christian Science Reading Room

"Turkey, loved ones, deviled eggs and the people that had the big feast a long time ago in our history and started Thanksgiving."

Ronald Sides, maintenance man

What I'm most thankful for

"It's between my family and my health. I can't decide."

Alicia Parsons, senior, Crescent Valley High School

"My guitar."

Steen Skinner, Junior, CVHS

"I'm thankful for my ATV."

Cody Parsons, sophomore, CVHS

Turducken Day?

For some people, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without Turducken, the pinnacle of fowl-based culinary decadence. Made out of a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey, it could be seen as the best of all possible birds, or the Hummer of the Thanksgiving table. What most people don't know is that many combinations were tried out before this edible Russian nesting doll was arrived upon. Below we offer a list of Turducken's less popular predecessors.

• Cowporken - A chicken inside a pig inside a cow, this seemingly holy carnivorous trinity confused diners, who kept having to ask for "the other white meat."

• Kangatoomu - Australia's answer to the Turducken, it's cockatoo stuffed in an emu and wedged into a kangaroo's pouch. Oddly enough, it sometimes occurs naturally in the wild.

• Hippocrocypus - Just like it sounds, a platypus shoved inside a crocodile, rolled up and stuffed in a hippopotamus. The ultimate delicacy, people literally died because it tasted too good.

- Compiled by Jake TenPas