Hello and welcome to a special turkey edition of Under the Henfluence.
Turkey season is my favorite time of the year and it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. For the last few years as fall as rolled around, a dormant Google Alert for “wild turkeys” starts filling my inbox once again.
Last year it was the group of 40-60 wild turkeys terrorizing a New Jersey retirement community. "I can't get out of my door," a resident told a News 12 reporter. "Sometimes I can't get out of my car. They go to attack you." Though wild turkeys are smaller than their domesticated cousins, they can still weigh between 16 and 24 pounds and run up to 20 miles an hour. The turkeys blocked houses, pecked cars, and even broke through windows.
This year the big story was that of Gerald, a wild turkey in Oakland that began attacking people who dared to visit the Morcom Rose Garden starting in May. There are multiple theories as to how this came to be the case: more people using the garden during the pandemic, someone feeding him leading him to lose his fear of humans, or the presence of a Mrs. Gerald and poults nearby. Regardless of how it happened, Gerald’s behavior got so bad that the garden had to be closed to visitors while officials sorted out what to do about him.
The Mercury News reported:
“He was relentless,” one victim posted on Nextdoor, which is filled with both complaints and defenses of Gerald. “My fiance barely warded him off with a stick. People in the park yelled at me to ‘hold my ground.’ He was stalking me, and I swear I was getting flashbacks to the velociraptor scenes in ‘Jurassic Park.'”
Though some voted to euthanize Gerald, there was public outcry against the idea. (Frequently even people who are willing to eat an animal have trouble with the idea of killing it once it’s treated like an individual in the news.) The city tried training Gerald not to attack people with no success. Their traps to catch him initially failed as well. Finally Rebecca Dmytryk, director of Wildlife Emergency Services, had the idea of using Gerald’s particular dislike of old women against him. She pretended to be “a frail old lady,” Dmytryk told The Mercury News.
She crouched over and tucked her arms to her chest. “Oh no, oh no,” she cried. “Go away.” The more weak and fearful she appeared, the more emboldened Gerald became. Dmytryk continued the act, drawing Gerald in closer and closer. She saw something change in Gerald’s eyes and knew she had him where she wanted. As Gerald moved in to attack, she grabbed him by the scruff of the neck — yes, she says turkeys have neck scruffs that feel a bit like a T-shirt inside a sweatshirt — and she had him.
Gerald was rehomed to an area with plenty of other wild turkeys for companionship and few humans in sight.
Since I’ve been following the saga of wild turkeys vs. neighborhoods, I’ve found multiple stories like this every year. (A few weeks ago, a woman in Boston had to fend off a wild turkey by hitting it with her purse.) Most of them use the phrase “aggressive” and describe turkeys “terrorizing” the town, likely because both words aren’t typically what people think of when they think of soft, gobbling turkeys.
But what’s particularly impressive about the appearance of wild turkeys in stories that span the entire United States, is that fifty years ago, it was hard to find a wild turkey anywhere in America. Largely unrestricted turkey hunting decimated their numbers and the logging industry further harmed the turkey who (surprisingly for their size) fly up to roost in trees at night. In the 1930s in Pennsylvania, for example, there were only about 3,000 wild turkeys left in the state. Today there are over 300,000. Similar stories have played out in every state except Alaska which has no major turkey populations.
After failed attempts to restock the turkey population by dropping domesticated breeds into the wild, people tried something new. In the 1960s and 70s, wildlife biologists trapped wild turkeys from states like New York that had plenty and moved those throughout New England. The turkeys didn’t just survive but thrive, even moving to places that wild turkeys had never been seen before. Unfortunately this meant that in places like densely populated New England or new suburbs springing up in previously wild areas throughout the rest of the country, human-turkey altercations weren’t far behind.
Humans feeding turkeys are the root of many of these problems. Turkeys can also see humans as potential competition for their territory—hence attacking them. It’s the same reason reflective surfaces like shiny cars or windows often get broken by turkeys; they’re just trying to show the turkey in the mirror who’s boss. If people stood their ground instead of running, as many wildlife biologists suggest, the turkey loser wouldn’t bother them.
And perhaps it’s this incongruity most of all that makes me love wild turkey season. Because at the same time of the year that humans are preordering their Thanksgiving turkeys—usually about 46 million of them a year—from farms that they’ll never visit, the turkeys in our yards are fighting back. And often they’re winning.
News from the Coop
The chickens are all ready for winter. Temperatures dropped earlier this month and I winterized the coop earlier than usual: putting in extra fluffy bedding, a big shower curtain to keep out the draft, and their flat panel heater (much safer than a heating lamp). Most of the girls are molting and we’re down to one or two eggs a day—if any. It makes me extra glad that I prepared for this by saving eggs beginning a few months ago. If you didn’t read it already, I wrote about how eggs are actually a seasonal food and what people did to get by in the eggless winters of yore for Heated.
My rescue hens, Thelma and Louise, are still (slowly) putting on feathers but are patchier than I’d like. They’ll be getting a wellness visit to the veterinarian on Monday just to make sure there isn’t anything else I can do to help them recover from their years as industrial egg laying hens. Many ex-batts only live for a year or two after rescue. I knew that going in but the more time I spend with them the harder it is to accept that our time together may be limited. They’ve brought me as much joy this year as I hope their new life as brought them as you can read in this essay about it for Catapult.
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If you liked this email, please share it with a chicken or animal lover in your life! As always, email me at underthehenfluence@gmail.com with any tips or comments. See you in a few weeks.
-Tove