Watch aggressive wild turkey take on traffic in Sacramento neighborhood

The Sacramento Bee ^ | February 15th, 2018 | Unattributed

[Mariner]

This wild turkey wasn’t too pleased with traffic on Riverside Boulevard in Sacramento’s Land Park neighborhood on Thursday, Feb. 15th.

[Mariner]

This thanksgiving I had 3 of them under my magnolia tree just as one was roasting in the oven.

This is about 3 miles from my house.

[Strac6]

Are we seeking a Wild Turkey, or a bunch of Pussy drivers. One 10 MPH bumper kiss and that turkey would be AMF.

:)

[Paladin2]

I’m not sure which is the personal trainer, the wild turkey or my dog....

[Terry L Smith]

“Yo! Y’all in MY HOUSE, NOW!”

[ProtectOurFreedom]

That is hilarious! That male is putting on a great mating display for cars with his fan out. He responds to cars beeping their horns thinking it is a female ready to mate. But he is really startled by the orange Mustang revving his engine.

We are absolutely overrun with them over here in the South San Fran Bay area. Fremont and Milpitas is full of them. The Peninsula is full of them. I saw a flock of about 30 at Sunol Wilderness last week.

[Mariner]

“We are absolutely overrun with them over here in the South San Fran Bay area. Fremont and Milpitas is full of them. The Peninsula is full of them. I saw a flock of about 30 at Sunol Wilderness last week.”

I think it’s because of the shortage of Mountain Lions.

Overrun here too.

Though the further you go up in the hills, the more sparse the populations.

[IndispensableDestiny]

My wife slammed the brakes for a turkey. She was rear ended, totalled her car. The police officer advised her to never do that again.

She went to VPI (Virginia Tech), has VPI plates.

[Mariner]

There’s no reason to run ‘em over just for sport.

What’s ONE minute of your day worth?

[Strac6]

Not run over them, do’t kill them, just enough of a bumper tap so they go away.

[Mariner]

“My wife slammed the brakes for a turkey. “

How does a 20lb turkey suddenly appear in front of her, so suddenly that she had to slam on her brakes?

Maybe she wasn’t watching the road.

[Olog-hai]

You’re seeing the latter.

I use the old railroad trick of honking the horn in a stuttering beep-beep-beep-beep-beep pattern and the turkeys scatter; if they’re posturing like the one in the video, they stop immediately and go back to looking like hens. Second last one I did that to flew straight up in the air, too.

[Rebelbase]

They’ll be gone in a couple of weeks if there’s ever a total EBT card failure.

[Mariner]

“They’ll be gone in a couple of weeks if there’s ever a total EBT card failure.”

Probably.

But we’re wallerin’ in ‘em right now.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I braked for a squirrel once outside Boston. Guy behind me was REALLY PISSED, pulled up beside me and yelled “We don’t brake for squirrels around here!”

Some time after that, squirrels were devouring all the fruit on my trees and I embarked on a mission to get rid of them. Little did I know I was going to “dispose” of about 80 of the blasted things before I could eat some of my own fruit.

[Mariner]

While they can “jump” impressively, they are always back on the ground within one second.

I’ve never seen one actually fly. They’re just too fat.

[Strac6]

Smart move!

[Olog-hai]

Actually, they’re pretty strong fliers. The one I scared into flight went straight up vertically about twenty feet. They roost in treetops; I’ve seen them at sunset flying up to roost.

[lee martell]

Like walking, feathered Zeppelins.

[Mariner]

https://www.thespruce.com/what-do-turkeys-eat-386553

Sacramento is known as “The City of Trees”. It’s an urban forest the likes of which you don’t often encounter.

Only Paris has more trees within the city limits.

And at least half of our trees are Valley Oak, with some of the big ones dropping a thousand pounds of acorns every year.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I’ve seen a lot of wildlife changes over here. There are something like 100 lions roaming the Santa Cruz mountains. Each requires about 10 square miles of land. I think the lion populations are much higher now since hunting them was banned. Not sure why the turkey and coyote populations have soared and why they have moved into our neighborhoods.

Crows moved in here about 15 years ago. They eat the Mourning Dove eggs, so there are no more Mourning Doves here. What a lousy tradeoff! We get raucous “caw, caw, caw” with the rookeries here and no more gentle “coo, coo.”