Originally published at: A truculent turkey at a DC park attacks a woman using a bike as a shield (video) | Boing Boing
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Truly a “bird of courage” who would “not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”
My tom is respectable toward me but sees my wife as an immediate threat to be flogged on sight. I remind her how tasty turkey is, yet she remains committed to pardoning him daily.
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Are turkeys endangered or under some kind of protection? Wondering why this bird hasn’t just been dispatched. If this turkey was a black guy he’d be dead already in a “police action”.
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I was wondering how the turkey managed to use a bike as a shield, and if he had a sword in his other appendage, and… oh, this story is not nearly as interesting as I thought.
(go turkey!)
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Better this turkey rather than some of the cat sized rats that live down there.
She’s lucky.
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Wondering why this bird hasn’t just been dispatched
“kill everything that’s inconvenient” … is wrong, passenger pigeon wrong, climate change wrong.
he’s just a turkey, not a predator.
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Why is it so hard to just get on your bike and ride away? And for that matter, why was she off her bike in the first place?
“Can you help?”
“I’m busy recording a video.”
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Olé!!
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Well the post said the guy shooting this video was knocked off his bike on an earlier day by the same turkey, so it’s possible the turkey dismounted the lady involuntarily from her bike.
My only experience with wild turkey was having to wait for 3 of them to cross the road (insert Dad joke here) one time. They entered the road right in from of my car and then just took their time getting across. They did not seem moved by my horn to increase their speed. They didn’t attack me, though, so that’s a plus. I was attacked by a blue jay once, for absolutely no discernible reason, and I’ve hated that species ever since.
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Turkeys are among the closest living relatives to tyrannosaurs. Some of them are happy to remind us of that lineage.
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It was in a park, so yes, it’s protected from hunting. Though if it wandered into an area where hunting was allowed, spring is usually legal turkey season.
Wild turkeys can fly. Not fast and not gracefully, but they can certainly catch a casual cyclist. And this time of year they can be pretty mean.
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After you pull all the feathers and stuff it with cornbread, he’ll settle down some.
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“Ok this is insane …”
This guy has apparently never before encountered animals who aren’t pets.
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Perhaps this is one of the ones that shouldn’t be pardoned.
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Wild turkeys don’t give a fuck. They can get pretty feisty.
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I understand that when it gets close enough to Thanksgiving Day, they get so mean that they freak out and enter another dimension where they peck away unseen at your feet while you’re asleep, with that waking you up so to remind you to defrost the diamond-hard birdy that you plucked from the market bin filled with other turkeys most of which were unbought and frozen for ten years. My understanding on that matter may be flawed though.
Why you always bring a tire pump. Proved useful to me once when some farm doggo decided he didn’t like me riding bike along “his” road. Didn’t have to hit him, though. Just showed I was more fierce than he thought he was and my kabuki was better than his.
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The Wild Turkeys around here are pretty chill, it is the Cobra Chickens you have to watch out for.
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