Finally, the Courant has a story you can sink your teeth into.
We learn from today’s paper that in the past month a number of wild turkeys are raising hell near King Philip Drive. According to the paper, “the increasingly brazen birds have surrounded cars on driveways, torn up gardens, chased pedestrians and postal workers and even attacked a cop, pecking the officer’s hand and drawing blood.”
“They pick the bulbs from my flowers. I have to chase them away,” said Maria Rodrigues, a Brewster Road resident for nine years told the daring duo of turkey-hunting reporter. “They chase cars, too.”
Now at first I scoffed, then recalled that last summer I had to stop on Trout Brook Drive where they’re building some new condos because there were four wild turkeys in the road. Pedestrians and drivers were all gawking at the birds. The turkeys themselves just ignored us all, until a cop car came up with a siren wailing. Then the sauntered off toward the woods.
Apparently, the birds are getting more brazen.
Again, per the Courant, “Postal carrier Sherry Zitani, working her route on Lindy Lane, was surrounded and pecked by a flock of turkeys. According to animal control officer Karen Jones, the turkeys had followed Zitani from house to house. The following day, Feb. 23, Zitani was pursued and attacked again, presumably by the same group of turkeys.”
I’m guessing that postal workers are not typically advised of how to handle a posse of wild turkeys attacking them.
The police seem to fare no better.
The Courant tells us that “last Saturday, two weeks after he last responded to a report of annoying turkeys, police Officer Dominick Creaco went to Brewster Road to investigate a complaint that a pair of the big birds were chasing people on the street. When Creaco stepped out of his cruiser to talk to the homeowner who had called police, a turkey attacked him.”
“The turkey just came up to me and started flapping its wings and pecked at my right hand,” Creaco told the paper. He still has a small scab on his hand.
Creaco scared the turkey away by waving his baton, the Courant reported, “but fellow police officers won’t let him forget the incident. They put together a photo lineup that included the picture of a turkey. ‘They’re making turkey sounds and they’re putting up signs of turkeys,’ Creaco said.”
The Courant found state animal control experts who said that residents shouldn’t feed the turkeys — now, there’s a twist, since typically it’s turkeys feeding humans — and ought to make the birds feel unwanted.
Well, maybe.
But I think perhaps they just want a three-bedroom place with a nice kitchen. Maybe we should let them move in.
In any case, thank you to Courant reporters HILDA MUÑOZ and DANIEL P. JONES for a great turkey tale. And shame on their idiot editors for failing to put it on the front page, where stories of this caliber belong.
The West Hartford Blog 