Eugene weekly., March 08, 2012, Page 14, Image 14

DIGS :
EW’S ECO HOME & GARDEN ISSUE
birds
of a feather
On the hunt for Eugene’s
(not so) wild turkeys
BY RIC K LEVIN
N
o less an enlightened American than
Benjamin Franklin was royally pissed that
the U.S. Congress, after six long years of
deliberation, declared our national bird to be
the bald eagle. Franklin, inventor of bifocals
and the lightning rod, suggested a bird of a different feather
altogether. In place of the dishonest, lazy raptor of “bad
moral character” that is the bald eagle, this Founding Father
suggested a fowl he deemed far less foul — the wild turkey.
The bald eagle, Franklin wrote to his daughter in January
of 1784, was a “rank Coward,” whereas Ben admired an avian
that was “withal a true original Native of America,” one that,
although at times a tad “vain & silly,” would remorselessly
assault any British grenadier foolhardy enough to “invade his
(the turkey’s) Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”
Vain, silly and, if you ask me, more than a little creepy,
shifty and ominously dim-witted — which, in our devolving
political climate, only further enhances the bird’s emblematic
status. Envision a gobbler on the fl ip side of a quarter, gun
in one talon and foreclosure notice in the other: It’s not so
outrageous. I can’t speak for bald eagles, but wild turkeys
do seem to be an engrained, albeit oddly atavistic, element
of the national scene. And here in Eugene, they’ve become
as much a fact of life as hippies, hash and hula hoops. Wild
turkeys own the streets. They’ve banded together and staked
their hood, on their wattled way to celebrity status.
Just look at all the people taking pictures of them, like
ad-hoc paparazzi of persistence and pluck.
For the better part of a month, I’ve been tracking an
infamous gang of gobblers that has taken up residence in
my West Eugene neighborhood. They make for strange
neighbors — aloof, somewhat presumptuous, averse to
backyard barbecues — but I have no serious beef with
them; it’s a free country, and Eugene has a long-standing
tradition of tolerance. These turkeys, perhaps by proxy of
the famous presidential turkey pardon, fi rst appeared on my
street shortly after Thanksgiving, slowly strutting single-fi le
down the sidewalk like some lost regiment searching for its
decimated westward outpost.
Maybe you’ve seen them: An undiminished rafter of fi ve
plump, plumed, polygamous Rio Grandes, two toms and three
hens, whose zone of foraging is bound, roughly, to the east and
west by Pearl and Chambers, respectively; north by 5th Avenue
and perhaps beyond, deep into the heart of the Whiteaker; and
as far south, as one respondent claimed in an EW Facebook
posting, “above Rockridge (in the) vicinity of 50th.”
The fi rst time I happened upon this gang of turkeys, I nearly
shit my pants (and by “gang” I mean no disparagement, as it
is an accepted term for a group of gobblers). I’d never seen
anything like it — a clutch of winged zombie pinheads, shaped
like upside-down question marks and somehow vulture-like
in appearance, dark and reptilian and as out of place as a
manatee in Montana. Having grown up in a rural hamlet on
Washington’s Key Peninsula before moving in third grade to
Minneapolis, eventually ending up Seattle, I’d encountered
everything from deer, pheasant, bald eagles, orca, otters and
brown bear in the wild, not to mention those unlikely nocturnal
creatures that thrive in urban grit, possum and raccoons.
attempt to establish wild populations,” Budeau says. “Many
of the wild turkeys that we now have stemmed from releases
in the 1970s of wild-trapped Rio Grande turkeys.”
The transplant took.
My own research into Eugene’s wild turkey phenomenon,
largely anecdotal and not remotely scientifi c, involved
reading up on the bird, perusing statistical data and, more
immediately, tracking them down and observing their
behavior. I’m sad to report that the most salient thing I
can say about tracking, following and bird watching wild
turkeys for any length of time is this: They are boring.
Like cows, they are easily spooked, and when they aren’t
just standing around, they move slowly. I tried to trick my
photographer into getting attacked by sending him into an
enclosed space to get a good picture — no go. Like sex,
Eugene’s gang
of turkeys
P H OTO B Y T R A S K B E D O R T H A
But turkeys? Five of them, jaywalking, orderly and
unfl appably, almost arrogantly, across 11th and Polk,
like the Beatles crossing Abbey Road? Here we enter the
dimension of humming monoliths and Log Ladies, a Lynch-
like scene of urbanity that alerts neural anomalies. As
another Facebook wild-turkey respondent said about fi rst
seeing them in Eugene: “I thought I was f@#king crazy.”
Nope — not crazy. Though wild turkeys are not native to
Oregon, their presence here is no mystery or preternatural
zone-slippage. In fact, according to Dave Budeau, upland
game bird coordinator with Oregon Department of Fish &
Wildlife, the fi rst release of these birds into Oregon habitats
dates back to at least the late-1800s. “Many releases were
domestically raised birds that did not fare well in the wild
and eventually disappeared,” Budeau says.
Turkeys, however, make for good viewing and hunting,
so hardier breeds of wild turkeys, such as Rio Grandes
from Texas and Merriam’s turkeys from the southwest,
“were trapped in other states and released into Oregon in an
celebrity and the Super Bowl, it is way more exciting
anticipating them than fi nding them.
In fact, the single most dramatic turkey-related event I
witnessed was the a young woman with a dog walked into
heavy rush hour traffi c along W. 11th, stopped in the middle
of the street and held up her hand to stop the onslaught of
cars as the turkeys crossed the road. So I can’t tell you why
the turkey crossed the road, but I can tell you how. And,
for me, the most amazing thing about these fi ve, apparently
stupid-beyond-Darwinian-fi ttest-survival birds is that,
minus such foolhardy human intervention, their numbers
have not diminished. Five arrived. Five remain. Go fi gure.
“Turkeys do have very keen senses,” ODFW’s Budeau
says. “They have excellent eyesight and can hear well, so
they are not dumb in that respect. In the wild, they use these
senses to reduce the likelihood of becoming prey. In town,
they can use these same senses to increase their survival.”
That said, Budeau admits that “turkeys certainly can be
struck by cars, so it is a bit surprising that none of them
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14 MARCH 8, 2012 EUGENE WEEKLY
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