A wild turkey is attacking people in D.C.
wsj.com
wsj.com
We have turkeys all over urban Minneapolis. It is easy to get them irritated. I keep my distance and steer clear of them because once they go into fight mode they do not back down.
And just yesterday, driving through the tangle of 35/94/55, my wife pointed out a dead turkey on the side of the road.
They don't usually ask for a second or third fact after that.
Do you pick the duck-sized horses or the horse-sized duck?
On a golf course.
>> I should think the head/bill area would be hard to hit and painful.
Significantly harder to hit but significantly less painful than a human head.
Plus geese lead with their heads. Classic boxing mistake.
I didn't hurt the bird, but a good pop did make him and his two buddies rethink trying to attack me for daring to come within 200yrds of them on the fairway. I've seen some people get upset about pace of play, but this was the first time I saw the forward group come after the back one.
I went with a punch instead of the golf club I had in my hand because I didn't want to kill the bird.
Filed that one away.
Edit: Dumb question. I can think of a few who would most likely love the publicity...
Most people - especially in cities - aren’t used to wildlife and are easily scared, just as those turkeys aren’t used to a dog chasing after them.
The first time I was in NYC there was a raccoon in the center of a trail in Central Park, just kind of chilling. Everyone was giving it a ridiculously wide berth and people looked at me like I was crazy for walking right by it. It’s just a raccoon. As long as it’s not rabid it’s less potentially dangerous than many dogs.
Of course, there’s the flip side of the coin where people think it’s OK to approach large wildlife in national parks…
Thing is, if a raccoon is just chilling and isn't terrified of people near it, there's a very real chance it is rabid.
People feed squirrels and raccoons, and then some random passerby ends up getting attacked by the habituated animal who wants food. Squirrels can easily draw blood.
As god is my witness, I thought turkeys couldn't fly?
I was impressed how well they adapted. Compared to rural turkeys I've encountered they were quite calm.
Luckily, turkey psychology is easy - if the tom perceives you as a manly turkey, you're another tom, and we need to fight to establish who is the bigger turkey. If you're perceived as a lady turkey, you're a potential date, so I'm going to inflate my gross head penis (aka snood) at you to impress you.
So all I had to do was whack them in the wings with a putter when they tried to hit me with them, until they admitted I was indeed the biggest turkey.
Although they still kept showing their obscene snood to my wife for a bit, until I convinced them that she was my lady turkey, and off limits.
Really aggressive and menacing noises.
EDIT Actually I discovered that it is a "gallo cedrone", it's fairly common here in Italy too, no need to import it from Scotland
https://www.relicmilitaria.com/product/italy-scarce-5th-bers...
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ww2-movie-characters/image...
That bird is like New Game + Chicken.
The lake was small and really muddy. The only viable path through it was through the small patches of reasonably clear water by the east side, but not having noticed that, I and my partner rowed ourselves into the mud.
The swan was large, female and obviously protective of her herd of cygnets, squeaking somewhere from within the reeds. She got real close and made angry noises at the kayak, waving her wings at us. She would swim away and then start an aggressive run at us, literally running on the mud, braking just inches away of our bow. We protected ourselves, the person in the front holding the row as a weapon, the one in the rear trying to frantically row ourselves back to clearer water.
In the end, we were towed out to safety by another, more experienced duo of our group. But I learned to never underestimate a swan.
In general, birds have high intimidation stats but super low damage stats. Geese and swans are aggressive and mean, but they can't do anything to actually hurt you.
The exception is birds with talons.
These stats are Tier Zoo ratings, I presume? https://www.youtube.com/c/TierZoo/videos
I used to go sailing on a lake, and sometimes the males would assume having sails out was a territorial display and attack a dinghy.
One of the friends I encountered turning back had been bitten by a goose, and said that it was as if somebody had grabbed his flesh with pliers. He thought I had been wise to turn around.
It’s seldom fatal.
I would not hesitate to grab an attacking wild turkey by the neck and tearing its head clean off. Hold it upside down to drain the carcass, and you’re halfway home to roasting it for an excellent meal. No joke.
I’m guessing that the local Fish and Wildlife Department might frown on that approach to solving the problem, but I would argue that they should have gotten off their asses and dealt with it.
Mostly, it's a matter of being confident and moving quickly. You can expect to get hurt if your movements and reactions are slower than the bird; above all, do not let it gain the initiative or advantage.
The same approach will help you to avoid running into any issues with the relevant government agencies. They won't charge you if they don't catch you. Wear an orange vest over the coveralls, and it's likely no one will even question your actions.
I may be mistaken, but I think you are allowed to defend yourself regardless of season. Think about it, boars and bear, equally lethal in or out of season, some might argue bear are worse during off season due to cubs and such.
Now if they catch you red handed with a bottle of tabasco, your goose may be cooked so to speak.
If you engage when not strictly necessary, you are likely to be portrayed as the aggressor. The consequences may not be as severe as you might expect from a similar encounter and use of lethal force on a human, but I think in both cases you are expected to walk away from the situation if that option is available to you.
I believe in standing your ground, but I don’t live in a state with such laws. Even if I did, you can still expect a lengthy legal process to resolve the dispute. I would expect this to be true regardless of whether you proactively kill a human or a turkey in self defense. You had better be prepared to make a compelling defense of your actions, unless the circumstances are clearly beyond reproach. And they never are anymore, since the lawyers stand to profit by arguing the case.
A dog that weights the same has teeth that are designed to bite and cut, so the have an advantage in hand to paw combat - but a turkey?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DE5Q-jwTaA
I grew up in the country and a rooster (male chicken) could give a grown man a run for their money, at a lot smaller and shorter than a turkey.
(Especially if you fill the fryer too full)
It's one the most threatening in that set of animals who are widely perceived to be too cute or helpless to physically assault. Sort of the inverse of city pigeons?
Source: had an aggressive rooster. He became soup after attacking a friend's visiting 6 year old kid.
They can be aggressive, that's for sure. I'm not sure a kick would make them back off. Are they a lethal threat? No. But they could hurt you. Who wants a bunch of cuts from fighting a wild animal? Best to avoid them if possible.
Birds have claws which are designed to cut and tear. They can also move them very quickly, scoring down your face/belly multiple times.
Birds have beaks which are designed to inflict harm. Think: woodpecker. Think: parrot (beak can cut open metal cans).
So you grab the turkey by the neck, now it is raking your entire front with claws while flapping wings which effectively blinds you by overwhelming your vision.
Or you grab it by the legs -- need to get both in one grab, by the way, and it pecks you.
And you might be assuming a fair fight. What if you are walking down the street, and the turkey jumps you from behind?
Yes, that sounds like a bizarro comic, but the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_capercaillie (mentioned several times here) is known to do this.
Growing up, we were farming some turkey and it is how we caught them when butcher day came: https://youtu.be/YRXhM9ycU0Y
Nothing a grown adult can't handle, but for elderly or children it is definitely stronger (and heavier!) than a chicken.
If you were savage and willing to kill the turkey, then it's quite easy.
Subduing a wild animal without injuring is quite difficult and messy
Australia. Where a bird that _doesn't_ want to kill you is a sex pest.
That is what wild turkeys do. When they got numerous it was an almost daily event that I'd get threatened by a turkey just walking to my car.
Some seem to get a bit more acclimated to people but others are pretty quick to be aggressive.
It would make quite the banquet stuffed and cooked up for homeless in DC. Just sayin'.
Side note, one thing I enjoyed about that episode was that, under the layers of cynicism and absurdity, there was a kernel of patriotism and national pride.
Not quite an attack but I remember the Toronto Police tweeting about a turkey disrupting traffic: https://twitter.com/TPSOperations/status/1362483565267742721
https://www.universalhub.com/2014/brookline-you-dont-try-sho...
Rabid fox bites nine people on US Capitol Hill (April 7) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61031683
"Don't ask don't tell"
I'm only 10% joking. This isn't the kind of thing that gets a lot of case law built up (because 99% of the time it happens it happens in a jurisdiction that DGAF, not downtown DC) so it's really a gray area. And in the case of gray areas courts tend to default to just whatever the local norms of "how things ought to be" are.
This being the DC area if someone in a suit jacket decides to punt the turkey into traffic for being a twat nothing will probably happen but some college kid from the panhandle or Mexican service worker cracks its neck and then takes it home to cook/freeze (because that's what any sensible person on a Busch Lite budget would do) they'll probably get the book thrown at them. They're real big on those sorts of "the law is relative based on your station in life" type things down their.