When the phone rang at 3:30 this morning, my first reaction was to throw it at the wall. Then I realized that a phone call in the middle of the night, just a few hours removed from an embarrassment of Thanksgiving gluttony, could only signal tragedy.

“Dude, we’re fucked! We’re all going to die!”

It was my friend Monty Gelstein, a bit of a paranoid but not usually one to declare an emergency.

“Good,” I said. “Is it the giant asteroid?”

“I’m serious, man! I think the turkeys were poisoned!”

“Yeah, well, I’m a vegetarian, so …”

“This thing could be contagious,” Monty screamed, “this could be the virus that wipes out the human race.”

“Listen Monty,” I said, putting on my bathrobe and slippers and heading downstairs. “I have enough bourbon running through my bloodstream to kill any virus.”

I poured a glass of Maker’s Mark, stepped outside, and lit a cigarette.

“OK, Monty,” I said, humoring my paranoid friend. “You’re talking about a conspiracy, right?”

“You’re goddamned right I’m talking about a conspiracy! Do you know how many Americans are going to die? Millions, man! Millions of Americans are going to die!”

“Al Qaeda?” I asked, taking a drag from my cigarette and searching the night sky for the coming asteroid.

“Who the fuck knows, Dude!”

“You think the turkeys were behind it?”

“Are you mocking me?” Monty spat.

“Yeah, I’m mocking you,” I said. “And now I’m going to hang up and go back to sleep.”

“Sleep? How can you sleep? Don’t you understand? You might never fucking wake up!”

“From your mouth to the turkeys’ ears,” I said, turning off the phone, putting out my cigarette, and checking the night sky once more for signs of the coming asteroid.

No sooner had I eased into dreamland than I woke to bloodcurdling screams. I was in Bariyapur, Nepal, where, every five years, bloodthirsty Hindus murder hundreds of thousands of innocent animals in the name of a make-believe goddess called Gadhimai. I’d read about this holocaust and had dark and vengeful thoughts that involved air strikes and napalm.

What I found in Bariyapur, though, was a surreal and beautiful scene. Hundreds of thousands of animals stood in a massive circle, like a Coliseum whose walls live and breathe. I eased my way forward from the outer perimeter to a position from which I witnessed the source of the bloodcurdling screams.

Two hundred and fifty would-be murderers had been assembled in a circle within the circle. They sat on their heels, their hands bound behind their backs, staring at the fate that awaited them. A small band of executioners, clad head to toe in black, wielded the knives that had been meant for the animals. Methodically, and without fanfare, they moved a would-be murderer into the middle of the inner circle, beheaded and deboned him, and cut him into bite-size pieces. When they finished with one, they butchered another.

“What are they going to do with the pieces?” I asked the guy next to me.

It was Monty. He was drinking a glass of Maker’s Mark and smoking a cigarette. He had a Zen-like calm about him.

“They’re going to hollow out the heads and make soup from the brains,” Monty said.

“What about the … pieces?” I asked.

“They’re going to freeze them and ship them back to the States where they’ll be grilled, packaged as gourmet pet treats, and donated to animal shelters.”

Monty handed me his glass of Maker’s Mark and cigarette.

“Dude, it was good to see you,” he said. “I’m beat though. I’m going to get some sleep.”

I looked at my watch. It was 3:30 in the morning. I was confused. The longer I looked at my watch I realized I was sitting up in bed, staring at my clock.

“What the fuck?” I asked myself.

I got out of bed, put on my bathrobe and slippers, headed downstairs, turned on the TV, and settled in to watch an episode of Chopped I’d recorded.

“Please open your baskets,” Ted Allen instructed the contestants. “You have: avocado, Manchego cheese, and … William Woodson.”

I recognized the name. He’s the guy who, according to an Associated Press report, “kicked his girlfriend’s puppy to death because he was upset that the pit bull wouldn’t behave before the start of the Pittsburgh Steelers game.”

I turned off the TV, poured a glass of Maker’s Mark, stepped outside, lit a cigarette, and searched the sky for the coming asteroid.

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