Yesterday, I was almost mauled to death by a turkey.
I was driving along, minding my own business, en route to pick up fertilizer that my husband had requested for our backyard. He had given me pretty clear instructions: arrive at the address, drive through a gate, and park around back.
As I pulled up to said gate, I noticed a large form standing right in the center of the opening. From a distance, it looked like it could have been a rock, but as I approached it, it was pretty obvious that I was staring at a turkey. This wasn’t too unusual because these birds are virtually everywhere by us, so I slowed down but didn’t stop the car, totally convinced that this guy was going to move once he saw my car headed straight for him.
Well, he did move – but he moved directly towards my car. In fact, he moved SO close to my car that I slammed on the brakes and waited for a good 15 seconds, convinced that I’d see him reappear out my rear-view mirror since he most definitely was UNDER my car at that point in time.
15 seconds passed. No turkey. 30 seconds. 60 seconds. After 2 full minutes of waiting and seeing absolutely nothing, I unwisely decided that I would get out of my car to make sure that I didn’t somehow run the poor thing over.
I got out of my car, and sure enough, Mr. Turkey – let’s call him Tom, for lack of a better word – appears. In the blink of an eye, he turned total Kamikaze Tom on me, fluffed up his feathers so he looked like a peacock, and literally started RUNNING directly at me FULL-SPEED. I kid you not: I legit ran around my car in a full circle screaming at the top of my lungs and waving my arms like a lunatic until I reached my driver’s side door again.
I opened that door so fast and threw my body inside, slamming the door with Angry Tom Turkey right at my back. Once inside the safety of my car, I took a deep breath, reassured myself that I was, indeed, still alive, and restarted my engine.
You’d think that was the end of my story, but no.
This freakin’ turkey takes about ten steps back, collects his composure and…
LAUNCHES HIMSELF ON TOP OF THE HOOD OF MY CAR!!!!!!!
And he doesn’t stop there. No! He starts literally pecking and bashing my windshield, looking for blood!
The comedy routine continues.
In a moment of panic, what do I do? I turn on my windshield wipers. But within about 2 milliseconds of doing so, I literally found myself thinking, “OMG what if its limbs get trapped in the wiper?!” so I stopped.
At this point, I honestly don’t even remember what I did, but the next thing I know, my car is moving and my entire body is sprawled on top of my horn so either I completely blacked out or some weird survival instincts took over. But just as quickly as this whole ordeal started, Tom the Turkey just JUMPED DOWN and WALKED AWAY AS IF NOTHING HAD EVER HAPPENED.
I had taken this picture at the very beginning to show my daughter when I thought, “oh haha, how cute, there’s a turkey next to me,” so you can’t really grasp the terror and humor that I’m sure the folks at the fertilizer store experienced watching this, but hopefully this story will serve as a warning to others that getting out of your car in the middle of turkey mating season is a bad, bad idea…
