Crashes through window, “decorates” Christchurch home
by Tom Chillemi –
Do turkeys, like cats, have nine lives? If they do, there’s a turkey in the woods near Christchurch that has used three of its lives.
Angela Dory-Edwards and her husband Donald Edwards had been out of town for a few days, and were on their way home on April 15 when they got a call that a front window of their home had been smashed. The blinds were tattered and hanging.
“We pulled up to the house and we immediately saw the broken window,” she said. “I said, ‘Oh my goodness!’ ”
It probably wasn’t a burglar, she reasoned, because a burglar would not break the upper window, but would have gone in through the bottom window.
They went inside and just as she thought it was a bird! “All I could see were bird droppings everywhere . . . in the living room, the kitchen, and the family room.”
She quietly looked into a bedroom doorway and to her shock and amazement she saw, perched on their bed, a wild turkey hen. After going through just about the whole house, the turkey had decided their bed was the best place.
It had flown into their front bedroom window breaking out the top window sash.
“Glass was everywhere,” said Dory-Edwards. She figures the big bird was in the house three days and broke in on a Tuesday, the day they left town. Someone mowing the grass noticed the broken window on a Wednesday.
Feathers were scattered everywhere. “There were as many feathers in our house as there were on the bird. She should have been bald,” said Dory-Edwards.
She called a cousin, Herbert Lockley, who came to the rescue. “He knew exactly how to handle that turkey.” He folded back its wings and gently took it outside. He asked Dory-Edwards if she wanted to kill it, since it is currently turkey hunting season. It was a big bird, but Dory-Edwards had no interest in cooking it. She recalled her mother cooking wild turkey and how she had to soak it for days to get rid of the “wild” taste. Even then the meat was stringy.
Dory-Edwards said this experience was the first time ever had a bird in the house . . . and it is hoped the last.
Lucky
She told Lockley to let it go. “That bird ran off just like it was going to the races,” she said. “It ran across General Puller Highway (Route 33) and almost got hit by a car and a pick-up truck.”
When last seen, the traumatized turkey, was headed north into a field. She had survived a collision with a window, been spared from the oven, and dodged two vehicles on the highway.
Call her “lucky.
