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Community Corner

The Foulest of Fowl

Once upon a time, not too long ago, a deranged, murderous turkey unleashed havoc on Chilmark's Old Ridge Hill.

For those of us who lived up in the hills of Chilmark in the late spring of 2008 (Yup, your Gossip Girl was there!), we seemed to have entered the Old West of a Sergio Leone movie. At every bend in the road, you expected to hear eerie flute music heralding a bad guy in a long brown duster, unshaven, filthy and . . . murderous.

We’re accustomed to wild turkeys on Martha’s Vineyard. Normally we see them in a disorderly pack. We say, “Awww” fondly as they cross the road. But up in the wilds of Old Ridge Hill, where the ghostly King’s Highway wraps around ancient oaks, a rafter of turkeys yielded a sociopath—with feathers.

In June of 2008, an electrician arrived to fix the furnace at a home on that street. Back at the shop, his co-workers had warned him, “There’s an attack turkey up there. Take a baseball bat.” To his later chagrin, he ignored their advice.

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At the site, as he stood outside his truck, the repairman felt a presence. He revolved to see a fully grown turkey, scarily tall, with wings spread wide, a cap of gristle wrapped tight around a bony head. Gold, beady eyes. And then with a shriek, it lunged.

The man yanked a soldering rod from his truck and held the fiery tip to the attacker’s chest. The bird leapt back, wings flapping. The man’s nostrils filled with the smell of burnt turkey, like Thanksgiving dinner gone bad.

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A couple of days later, a homeowner in the area saw the demon emerging from the woods. He had had frightening encounters with the beast before and ran to get a paintball gun he had purchased to keep the fowl at bay.

Back outdoors, the turkey hovered on a stone ledge. Man and beast flew at one another. He pointed the squad buster, racked it and discharged a grey plastic grenade. The big bird squawked back, its raggedy chest drenched with yellow paint.

Finally . . . showdown. It was a Saturday, high noon.

Cue the flute music.

A van from Bear Baby Equipment Rentals pulled up to a home where vacationers with young children would soon be arriving. Before the delivery duo, a man and a woman, could alight with rental baby gear, the homicidal turkey charged their vehicle.

Now don’t forget this poor bird had recently torched by a solder-gun, splatzed with a paintball grenade and, what else?–maybe clunked on its head with baseball bats, such as the one the electrician had spurned at his shop. Its battle cry in turkey-speak must have been, in human-speak, No More Mr. Nice Guy.

It rapped at the windows, screeched, extended immense wings, then rapped and screeched some more. The Bear Baby pair tossed the equipment out a window. They skidded away in a cloud of dust, frantically dialing the police.

In record time, Patrolman Jeffrey Day and Special Officer Matthew Gebo from the Chilmark police station rolled up in a cruiser. They got out to confront the alleged perpetrator, who now galumphed around baby strollers and chairs as if claiming the stuff as spoils of war.

Patrolman Day approached. The tom screamed and attacked. Special Officer Gebo jumped on the cruiser’s rear bumper. Patrolman Day hauled out his service revolver and blam-blammed two shots at the turkey. But the feathered assailant looked Death in the face and cried, ‘Hah!” The bird spun around and scooted for the hills. Patrolman Day, envisioning this insane turkey stalking the soon-to-arrive children, squeezed off two more rounds.

The outlaw flopped dead on the ground.

But there’s more! A fellow who lived up the hill—let’s call him Sheldon O’Neil; he’s been subjected to enough embarrassment—scrambled down the drive to find his pet turkey terminated. Turned out he’d fed this wild tom since he’d rescued it as an orphaned chick.

“What are you, an idiot?” he cried before punching Officer Gebo in the face.

An arrest followed. O’Neil was later given a suspended sentence and a fine. And the rogue turkey? The last we heard, it sat in deep-freeze at the law enforcement morgue.

F.Y.I., naturalist Gus Ben David, long associated with Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, says it’s a mistake to feed wild turkeys; it can make them territorial.

The poor mad tom was a case in point.

But three generations of its spawn live on along Old Ridge Hill. And sometimes, in the distance, a lone hiker can hear the strains of a flute.

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