Turkeys were in the news quite a bit this summer, and they have been in many stomachs recently. Flocks of live turkeys wander around in Tisbury, West Tisbury, Chilmark and to a lesser degree in Aquinnah, Edgartown and Oak Bluffs. Are these Island flocks wild turkeys? I would like to quote Vineyard Birds 2 which Barbara Pesch and I recently published. “The wild turkeys introduced by Gus Ben David from Arkansas in the 1970’s were extirpated in the ‘90’s. There are feral turkeys here.
The story of a hostile, feral turkey that prowled the neighborhood of Old Ridge Road terrorizing residents with beak and spurs ended on Father’s Day, June 15, with its fatal shooting by Chilmark police officer Jeffrey Day.
Responding to a distress call about an aggressive turkey, Officer Day shot and killed the bird, though not until it had chased him and his partner officer Matthew Gebo around the yard and onto the hood of a police cruiser respectively.
While the bullet-riddled corpse of a feral turkey lies stiff in a Chilmark police freezer, a fuller picture of its violent past on Old Ridge Road and the surrounding neighborhood is emerging.
An aggressive and combative wild turkey was shot and killed by a Chilmark police officer last Sunday after it reportedly attacked two people dropping off rental baby equipment at a home on Old Ridge Hill Road and then briefly held them hostage inside their delivery van.
There was a time, in the not so distant past, when turkeys crowded more than just the roads of Martha’s Vineyard.
