You’ve likely heard a couple of different variations on the origin of human beings and life on Earth. Many have been taught that God created all life on Earth and set the world we know in motion. For many others, you’ve followed science and believe that evolution kicked off the spark of life to bring us to where we are today.
But there’s another, less-known story about how life here began. Did you know that some believe our origins started in outer space?
The story begins with a creature as old as time itself. Known originally as Thurkey, this mystical creature became known as the great Thunder Turkey as it wandered the stars. Traveling from world to world, it sought out the perfect nesting ground. As it moved past our closest star, the great Thunder Turkey sensed a glowing blue world that would serve as its new home.
After it descended on our world, he laid thousands of his eggs across the land. From the desert to the sea, and into the forest, his offspring were spread across the globe. With our world now seeded, he was content to wait for his children to be born. He would journey around the world often to see the fruits of his creation. But unbeknownst to him, his fur had become infested with Pramut.
These small, parasitic insects survived off the dead skin cells under the Thunder Turkey’s thick coat. Fearing that the Pramut would harm his offspring, he fled into the Earth’s skies, where he shed off all his fur and skin in hopes that the Pramut would not endure. Sadly, the Thunder Turkey didn’t wear enough sunscreen and ultimately did not survive. However, the Earth’s winds carried the Pramut to all corners of our world.
With the Pramut scattered across the skies, they fell to the Earth. Desperate for a home, they found their way to the eggs of the Thunder Turkey. Infecting the young caused each new hatchling to be born distinct from the others. Some could only survive in the sea, while others would take to the sky. Those that remained on land also took on different shapes and colors. As the different species mated, new forms of life were created. This cycle continued for thousands of years as the world was populated with a rich variety of life.
Fast-forward millions of years, those creatures had mutated and gave birth to the first human beings, and our early civilizations. From making fire, to carving stone tools, we grew to become the most dominant species on the planet. And then when the time was right, we learned how to upload funny cat videos to YouTube.
All because the great Thunder Turkey had a nasty case of space fleas.
All hail the great Thunder Turkey!
In May of 1992, two friends and I published our first issue of our “zine”. This of course was long before the world wide web, and the mass internet we now have.
Zines were popular among those in the underground music scene and on the college and university circuits. The themes of the zines ran the gamut, but ours was always intended to be something really obscure.
Our first issue contained a number of humour / comical articles that came from the minds of three teenage kids. With bits related to music dropped here and there, the zine was mainly just a way for us to write out whatever stupid and crazy ideas we had at the time. If you’re curious about the old zine, you can read about some of it here.
My long time friend, Jason, wrote an article dubbed “A lesson in history”. This first article was all about the “thunder turkey”.
After digging through some old files from my old computer, I unearthed this image. A little digging on Google and I learned he’s actually called “Necron99” from a movie called Wizards.
Regardless, Jason wrote a story about how the “thunder turkey” (depicted here) was responsible for the creation of most of the life on Earth. For years since then, I have cracked jokes about the thunder turkey and Jason’s spin on the origin of life.
My kids have heard me make jokes about the thunder turkey time and time again. Recently, I told them that I was thinking about updating the story of the thunder turkey. I don’t often write the silly or oddball humor content anymore so this was a nice change of pace.
Big props go out to Jason H for his original version of this story.
