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Wild turkeys have been making a comeback within the eastern USA in recent decades. One bird in the District of Columbia has been aggressively attacking bikers and pedestrians in park areas.
FULL STORY: https://news.yahoo.com/wild-turkey-attack-d-c-132154060.htmlA wild turkey is on the attack in D.C.
There's a menace haunting the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail in Washington. It hunts the lonely, quiet stretch of woods between an aquatic garden and a recreation center. Suddenly, it appears in front of a biker, walker or runner and gives chase, flapping, slashing with its talons - and gobbling. It's a male wild turkey, and it's already sent someone to urgent care. ...
"We probably went four or five, six decades without turkeys in the district, unless it was a very, very small population that no one knew anything about," explains D.C. wildlife biologist Dan Rauch. ...
Wild turkeys were abundant before Western colonization. Indigenous peoples domesticated the bird across North and Central America, and most wild ones were relatively docile. ... Once abundant across North America, turkeys were missing from most of the East Coast by the 1920s. ...
On March 22, Clark Weigel, a special education specialist, was biking along the trail when he spotted a turkey in the path. Weigel dismounted and tried to leave, but the tom attacked, pecking and flapping. After throwing two phones and a radio at the enraged bird, Weigel finally threw his bike. The turkey slunk off. He left behind scattered feathers and a shaken but unharmed cyclist. "It's not something that I would expect to do at all, having to defend myself against a wild animal in D.C.," Weigel says. "I actually stuck around to file [a] report solely because I thought I had injured the animal."
That same day, the turkey appeared in the path of Terrance Savitsky, a research statistician at the Bureau of Labor Statistics out for a morning run. Savitsky backed up and tried to run the other way. The turkey ran, too. "Man, was it fast. I started running and realized it was gaining on me," Savistky says.
Another victim posted a photo of the turkey in full plumage to the local blog PoPville, reporting that he ended up in urgent care "with puncture wounds on my legs and I had to get a tetanus shot and antibiotics" after getting the wrong end of its talons. ...