Thanksgiving week was one of the most, and least, understood by Animalians. especially uplifted Animalians. For some, it was the occasion to express gratitude for the many blessings you have; while for others, it was the occasion to gorge yourself silly with food. Of course, there were plenty of people and converted Animalians who were more than willing to explain it. Of course, there were plenty of things to do before the big event.
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One such thing was cooking the food that was going to be eaten at Animalia's Grand Feast. While there were going to be more people than there were the last few years, there were still some meals which were going to be delivered. Of course, to make the most of it, there was an Animalian run cooking show where Animalians would teach how to cook certain parts of certain meals.
One of the biggest surprises was Lena, Animalia's "Guennol Lioness", doing a few "episodes", though with her parents being cooks this wasn't very surprising. Of course, being an Animalian, there were those who were more focused on her than her cooking skills. This ultimately reached its height when someone on the website (guess which one) said that she should just wear an apron (and nothing else) when she did her cooking. She responded, rather cleverly, with, "I may have gained more confidence, but I'm not confident enough to do that."
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Of course, such a feast wouldn't be possible without providing meat for the feast, and not just turkey. Of course, there were plant/tofu-based substitutes that vegetarians were able to eat that tasted close enough to turkey, but that wasn't the only thing being served. This was also the opportunity for predator Animalians to indulge in some hunting without too much trouble from others. The most noticeable "hunt" was Lana, even more so because she was originally Ukranian and a survivor of the Chernobyl accident. Lana not only got to hunt for the first time, but she did so alongside Clara and Richard. Despite it being her first time, she did a surprisingly good job.
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Another thing that was going on, though not directly related to Thanksgiving was the official "remodeling" of Animalia's Community Theater. While it was still, comparatively, young, it was decided that this was needed, partly because of Gloria's friends saying that it needed to be updated for opera, much to the confusion of several Animalians.
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Another thing that was happening was indirectly due to the continuing rise of hate crimes in America. Because of Animalia's reputation as a "safe haven" of sorts, there was a new surge in immigration, mainly among LGBT+'s and other racial groups, though in this case, Russians/Russian Americans were being targeted due to the conflict in Ukrane, though there were still those who, erroneously, believed that Covid-19 had been deliberately engineered by the Chinese and were targeting Asians because of this.
While Lyre/Animalia was able to create new "districts", the next runner up was Dino City, which was going through a bit of a housing crisis because of the influx. However, it was around this time that there was an announcement on the Animalia website that the location for a new Dinotopian Colony had been selected and would be announced later.
However, this meant that Trixie, Dixie and Vixi wouldn't be immediately admitted to WSA due to the fact that many immigrants had brought their families with them and had enrolled their children at WSA, much to Trixie, Dixie, and Vixi's relief but Miss Fabina's annoyance. However, they would be able to enroll normally next school year but were able to do a correspondence course before proper enrollment, which Miss Fabina admitted would be a nice middle ground.
In a rather unexpected twist, Trixie, Dixie, and Vixi posting a video of them showing off their new forms onto social media catapulted them into the low ranks of internet popularity so, much to her chagrin, allowed them to do a few videos for the Premium section of the website, especially since there was a few Animalians from the BARA House who wanted to do some videos with them. Miss Fabina decided to prank Trixie by simply not telling her the male Animalian she was doing the video with was a large wolf Animalian.
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Speaking of the BARA house, the sudden halt of the Whiptail lizard conversions (unofficially called Project Lesbos) was generating a bit of controversy, though most of the controversy was from either "angry feminists" or "uneducated idiots" on the website, so there was an official announcement from Horizon about this.
"We still don't know much about how whiptail lizards reproduce, so when they started noticing the male lizard Animalians, we froze it until mating season, which normally happens in late spring, early summer." said the Horizon Agent in the video. This still generated some angry comments, but these were mainly ignored, or replied to with clever comebacks.