Wellesley’s Brenda Nicolazzo and family have been co-existing with wild turkeys for years at their home. At first it was just a couple of the feathered interlopers at a time, but in recent years the turkeys have started to show up in rafters (yes, I looked it up) of 6 to 10, and they are no longer easily shooed away.
The most recent incursion prompted Brenda to reach out to the wider Wellesley community online for ideas on how to get rid of the birds. The turkeys started making themselves at home on her family’s back deck, and empathetic residents have weighed in with dozens of suggestions, from having a huge Thanksgiving feast (“I have a feeling they’re not grain fed… So maybe will skip the turkey dinner…”) to hosing them down to borrowing friends’ dogs (most of the Wellesley dogs we know would merely befriend the birds) to the hanging shiny things that might make them flee. Animal control officer Sue Webb suggests firing ice cubes at them…since you won’t need to clean up the cubes.
I reached out to Brenda, who shared the photos here and welcomed the chance to gain additional advice from our readers. Her home is in the Hardy Elementary School district and abuts wetlands.
“It used to be the turkeys just roamed the streets and you had to wait for them to move over before you could drive through,” she says. “Then they started hanging out in the front yard, picking on our grass and sunbathing in groups. We do have a fully in fenced backyard, but that doesn’t stop them. They are flying over the fence and they used to just hang out in the yard itself. This is the first year they have actually been bold enough to come up on the deck, as well as perching themselves on our side stair railings leading to the front screened in porch. My husband thought laying down a lawn chair in front of the deck entrance would stop them. Definitely does not…”
One blessing is that the birds, while pooping up a mess, at least haven’t been aggressive or threatening toward people.
While I didn’t have any brilliant turkey-scaring solutions, I did offer to trade a few of the Canada Geese who haunt our yard for a few of her turkeys.
“We happen to love Canada geese and might just take you up on your offer!” Brenda says.
A few years ago we had a number of turkeys occupy our pool area. After trying a number of things we turned up the volume of our outdoor speakers to max & played hard rock …. they were gone in an hour!