Wild Turkeys Attack People
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One for 'The Birds': Wild turkeys attack people
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By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
The Wall Street Journal
November 23, 2005, 10:40 AM CST
In April, Will Millington was riding his dirt bike down a narrow trail
in Norman, Okla., when he stopped before a flock of wild turkeys. The
hens scattered, but two toms flared their feathers and stalked toward
him. Then they suddenly leapt in the air, beat Mr. Millington with
their wings and tried to scratch him with the sharp spurs on the backs
of their legs.
Mr. Millington frantically revved his bike's motor. Thirty yards down
the trail he looked back. "They were running after me," says the
46-year-old property manager. "That was kind of spooky."
As Americans prepare to eat some 46 million domestic turkeys
slaughtered for Thanksgiving, their wild cousins are fighting back. The
explosion of the wild-turkey population to nearly seven million from
just 30,000 in the 1930s has put a growing number of humans in the face
of angry gobblers.
Patricia Huckery, a Massachusetts Wildlife Department district manager
in Acton, west of Boston, says she has gotten 25 calls this year for
advice on coping with aggressive turkeys. Last year in Cranford, N.J.,
a letter carrier killed a turkey with a stick after complaining to
police that a flock of turkeys wouldn't let him out of his delivery
truck. In Pennsylvania's Montgomery County, wildlife conservation
officer Chris Heil says he has had to kill 42 turkeys this year in
response to complaints about behavior ranging from attacking a child on
a tricycle to scratching cars.
Many bird lovers pooh-pooh stories of threatening behavior. In an email
exchange posted on the National Wildlife Federation's Web site, George
Harrison, author of "The Backyard Bird Watcher," told a questioner that
she was lucky to have turkeys in her backyard. He added: "They will not
attack you. They will be afraid of you, and run, should you try to
approach them."
But naturalists who have studied the wild turkey say it can become
aggressive toward humans as it adapts to suburban life. They worry it
may become the next form of "nuisance" wildlife, following in the
tracks of the whitetail deer and the Canada goose.
Wild-turkey flocks have a pecking order. If they live around humans,
some of the dominant toms may begin to include people in that order -
at a level below themselves, says Jim Cardoza, a turkey expert at the
Massachusetts wildlife agency. Wild turkeys "get used to people and
incorporate them into their view of society," he says. Some behavior,
such as putting out bird food and slinking quietly away, can encourage
these lordly males to think that humans are a subservient life form,
believes Mr. Cardoza.
Biologist James Earl Kennamer, senior vice president of the National
Wild Turkey Federation, an Edgefield, S.C., hunters' group, has studied
wild turkeys for 40 years. "When they think you're one of them, they'll
fight you to show who's dominant," he says. "If you turn your back,
they'll take it to mean they're dominant."
Tom turkeys in suburban woods can be 4 feet tall, weigh 25 pounds and
run 20 miles per hour for short bursts. Mr. Cardoza advises people to
show the birds who's boss. One tip is to carry an umbrella to poke at
the turkey. Ms. Huckery tells people to "get your broom and swat the
turkey away." Other tips for discouraging turkeys include spraying them
with a garden hose, yelling and banging pots and pans, and having a dog
in the backyard.
Lovett Williams, a Florida biologist, recalls that when he raised wild
turkeys, he sometimes had to establish dominance by grabbing an
obnoxious bird around the neck and holding it on the ground so it
couldn't scratch with its spurs. "I'd slap him like they do on the
Three Stooges," he says. "Then they'd wobble around and run off."
Peter Fagan, a charter boat fisherman from Montauk, N.Y., encountered a
large tom near his home last spring. Mr. Fagan, who hunts turkeys in
the Catskills, says he went out near his home, where turkey hunting is
forbidden, to practice his turkey-calling technique. While he was
setting up a video camera on a tripod, a tom walked by and buried a
spur in his knee, penetrating his thick canvas hunting pants.
Mr. Fagan says he didn't want to hurt the bird so he pushed him away
and kept filming as the bird jumped at him again and again. Finally,
Mr. Fagan made a cellphone call to a friend and the turkey, apparently
alarmed at hearing the other voice, stalked away.
Biologists believe the desire for dominance explains another irritating
turkey behavior: pecking at car doors and windshields. Mr. Cardoza says
turkeys "aren't self-aware" so they see their reflections in a car door
as a rival, and may attack it and keep pecking and scratching until
changing light conditions make the image disappear.
The birds, which naturally perch high in trees at night to avoid
predators, also irritate people by perching atop cars or house roofs.
Mr. Heil, the Pennsylvania wildlife officer, says a big part of his job
has become "verifying fowl damage" for insurance claims. Problems also
occur when well-meaning wildlife lovers raise wild turkeys and then
release them to populate woodlands on their property. Accustomed to
getting feed from humans, they readily approach, sometimes pecking at
shiny belt-buckles or buttons.
Last month, jogging on a back road in Massachusetts' Berkshire hills,
Betsy Kosheff passed a farmers' field where farm-raised wild turkeys
were pecking for grain. Suddenly about 30 of them took off after Ms.
Kosheff, who has a public-relations firm in West Stockbridge, Mass.
"It was like that scene in 'The Birds' except there was no phone
booth," says Ms. Kosheff, referring to the famous refuge in the Alfred
Hitchcock movie. A passing friend stopped her pickup truck and Ms.
Kosheff ran around it several times. The turkeys kept up the chase,
although she says "they were too stupid to split up or change
directions" to trap her. Finally, Ms. Kosheff got in the truck, where,
she says, her friend "was laughing so hard she almost choked on her
Dunkin' Donut."
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