Vintage Thanksgiving Greeting Card with Wild Turkeys

The proportions here are delightfully unbalanced: one turkey stands impossibly tall with its head craned skyward in what can only be described as existential dread, while the other bends earthward with its red wattle dragging through the grass like it's already given up. The painterly style is lush enough to be a minor masterpiece, which makes the whole 'we're going to eat these animals' subtext of the ornate red-and-black script — 'Best Wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving' — land with the cheerful menace of a hostage note written in calligraphy. Somewhere, an Edwardian housewife sent this to her sister and thought nothing of it.