Playing chicken? Wild turkey attacks people using park trail

A wild turkey in Washington, D.C. is running “afowl” with visitors to a park trail in what could be an extreme game of playing chicken.

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People using the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail are getting attacked by a wild turkey.

“[I was] just riding along the path, this gigantic turkey just kind of, like, jumps up towards my face ... almost claws me in the face. So, kind of knocked me off my bike, and then it proceeded to chase me around for, like, five minutes,” DeDe Folarian told WRC after he was attacked recently.

Folarian said he was not the lone turkey target.

The bird attacked a woman who tried to fight it off with her bicycle.

Eventually, he thought better of recording the angry bird. He said he put down his phone and picked up a stick and “started whacking the bird twice.”

The bird ended up running under a bush.

Jogger Everett Alvarez had his own close encounter with the fed-up fowl.

“He attacked me. And I run faster and he follows me,” Alvarez told WJLA.

Lucinda Fleeson was not able to flee from her bird blitz.

“I tried to get around him and he lunged at me, so I turned around to run and he lunged again and pecked me on my butt!” Fleeson told WJLA.

Dan Rauch, a biologist with the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment. said there are at least a hundred turkeys in the district.

He believes this one is the same bird that has been reported multiple times in the area, even as far as Maryland.

Rauch said the DOEE has tried to catch it and send it to a wildlife sanctuary, to no avial.

“I’ve been out there looking for it and I’ve been out there using different turkey calls, calls with males or females, trying to attract it in in order to catch that bird,” Rauch told WRC. “This is a male so it’s a pretty large turkey and when people see it, it will drop its wings, it will pop off to display.”

Apparently, it is turkey breeding season and the aggression the male turkey is showing is related to territorial behavior, WUSA reported.

The Prince George’s County Parks and Recreation Department has installed signs warning people to stay away from the “aggressive turkey.”

But Victor Davis, who works for parks and rec, told WJLA, “I mean some people don’t listen. They try to go up to it and take pictures stuff like that.” While they’re getting photos, the bird uses that moment as its chance to attack.

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