http://atadventure.blogspot.com/2008/05/blackbird-vs-turkey.html

Saturday, May 17, 2008
Blackbird vs. the Turkey
I had my first animal attack! I was hiking up a huge mountain and was
already really tired, when I rounded a corner and came across a wild
turkey and her babies. I don't know the proper name for a baby
turkey.
Since she didn't have time to round the kids up and get them safely
into the woods, she decided the next best plan was to attack. If
you've never seen a wild turkey, let me tell you that they are not
the
cute, fat little things that we trace our hands to make for 2nd grade
art projects. They are 3 ft tall, huge, ugly, and have talons the
size
of an adolescent's hands. At first, I wasn't worried when the turkey
started jumping in the air and clawing in my direction. I had my
hiking poles to keep her from getting too close and I assumed that
she
was only trying to get me to back up. It was when I backed up and she
continued her attack that I began to worry. I couldn't seem to get
far
enough away to calm her down and she was getting crazier by the
minute. Finally, I started running down the trail that I had just
come
up (yes, I ran from a turkey) but she ran through the brush and cut
me
off on the trail a few feet ahead. At that point, I was afraid. She
was blocking my only escape and continued to jump in the air,
hovering
above my head with back feet clawing at the air. I knew that a
peaceful departure was not going to be an option anymore and I didn't
want to have to beat a turkey to death with my hiking poles. I would
have been traumatized for life. So I decided to act as crazy as she
was. I started screaming and beating my hiking poles on every tree I
could reach. I guess she decided I had a lot more issues than she did
and she retreated up the mountain, calling out to the kids. Blackbird
1, Turkey 0.
Posted by nfields2 at 7:17 AM

http://independentartsblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/turkeys-gone-wild.html
Thursday, May 15, 2008

Turkeys gone wild
The turkeys are coming home to roost. News that a wild turkey is
stalking the streets of New Bedford, Mass., pecking at cars and
terrorizing pedestrians, is just the latest example of bad bird
behavior that has swept the nation in recent years. Long a staple of
a
New England Thanksgiving, the wild turkey was hunted to extinction in
Rhode Island, vanishing for more than 200 years until they were
reintroduced from Vermont in 1980 and again from New York in 1994 to
build up the state's now flourishing population. They seem to be
everywhere, an estimated 6,000 in all, divided into roving mobs that
torment the suburbs, especially in Jamestown and South County. Last
year, a Middletown motorist got out of his car when a wild turkey
scratched it, then bid a hasty retreat and filed a police report
after
the turkey kicked him. In recent years, turkeys across America have
chased joggers, attacked postal workers, toppled cyclists from their
bikes, dented cars, broken into homes and stores, halted traffic,
knocked out power lines and assaulted a lab technician who was riding
a moving Segway. But not all wild turkeys are a menace. At the South
County Museum in Narragansett, turkeys come out of the woods every
day
to pay a social visit to the two Narragansett turkeys on site -
Thompson the Tom and Greta the Gobbler. Museum director Jim Crothers
said the turkeys get together for a few hours to gobble about this
and
that - like a turkey version of "The View."