Front Page  »  

Cal Poly turkey attacks

May 12, 2012

A Cal Poly employee was knocked unconscious when he tripped and hit his head while backing away from an aggressive female turkey who was protecting her young. [KCOY]

When the turkey, who was nesting with her eight poults, saw the employee she became territorial.

SLO County Animal Services Administrator Eric Anderson told KCOY when turkeys, “feel threatened, there’s something they need to protect they may be a little bit more aggressive and may actually standoff or charge at people in those situations.”

Even so, this is not the first incident of a turkey charging at a human walking, jogging, or biking on the Cal Poly campus. A few weeks ago a male turkey charged a jogger leaving her with scratches on her arms and legs. Some students are now eluding the large birds by avoiding areas they are known to congregate in.


Loading...
Subjects:         
Related:


16 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Yet another reason to allow the concealed carry of firearms… ;)


0

This reminds me of an evening about six months ago when I was walking in Poly Canyon, and a plastic single-use shopping bag jumped out of the brush and started coming at me. I quickly jumped out of the way to avoid being hit in the face by the bag, and the bag fled back into the brush on the other side of the road. I thought it was just the wind, but now I realize that I may have been a victim. How many other people have been attacked or chased by plastic shopping bags on a windy day in Poly Canyon? I have a partial description: the bag that came at me was white, and had “CVS Pharmacy” printed on it. I better call the police and make a report, there may be other victims who have been too afraid to come forward. I really should walk with a friend on windy days.


0

How long will it be before we see the crying faces of people who have been “brutalized” by turkey bullying on Oprah or Dr. Phil?


Cal Poly has witnessed the “greatest” generation, the baby boom, generation x, and now the victim generation.


0

“A few weeks ago a male turkey charged a jogger leaving her with scratches on her arms and legs.”


Did the turkey try pulling down her underwear too?


0

Have no fear. As we speak (or whatever we’re doing), the calpoly administration has formed a committee to study this tragic problem. I believe the job posting is up already; the committee head will receive one of those fat six-figured calpoly admin salaries. I believe an endless list of pointless meetings has already been scheduled. The president of calpoly is serious about turkeys and has complete confidence the committee will someday think of a way to solve this problem.


0

Native wild turkeys are not the stupid kind. They can be quite smart. They roost in a different tree every night to evade predators, They can even fly.

It is the domesticated and farm bred lumps of lard that are the dumb ones. Kinda like the conservatives of turkey-dom.


0

Uh oh, here comes the global turkey scare. My granddad raised turkeys. Yes, they can be aggressive, but they are as dumb as a box of rocks. Don’t back off, attack. A 2×4 or a rock work really well. You’ll find some great recipes online.


0

What Max said. Don’t be chicken, folks!


0

Fear of a turkey. Amazing!


0

I know it sounds silly, but they can be pretty aggressive. Nevertheless, it seems like a kind of embarrassing way to get a concussion.


0

Add: And, obviously, I hope the guy is all right and recovers speedily.


0

A simple case of Meleagrisphobia.

Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithophobia

The first search took a few seconds the second took a few more.

Backing away is a rational act, and does not in itself denote a phobia. Obviously at some tipping point the gravity of the situation took over. A good reason to become barophobic, though fear of drifting out into space would be more compelling.

Finding things so easily on the internet is scary in itself, for example; “Interphobia is incorrectly identified as fear of the internet, Internet phobia being more correct. I prefer “Etherphobia”, mostly because it doesn’t exist.


0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(classical_element)


Yet, if it didn’t exist, why would our great early philosopher/scientists spend so much effort conjecturing about it’s qualities, precisely because they could not measure it?


0

That is the beauty of it. A cautionary tale, but not cautionary because Plato hypothesized it, cautionary because it was in vogue at the turn of last century at the time when the physics we know today were defined. In fact it was not even discredited in 1911, 6 years after Albert Einstein’s Theory of relativity.

I didn’t even think of the classical ether theory –this is the “early modern” Ether theory- Maxwell, 1878 that finally fell into disfavor by 1926 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories

In fact in a book published in 2005, Stanford Nobel Laureate Laughlin states “The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories#cite_note-2

So actually the “Ether” exists (Dark matter). It’s the “internet” that isn’t real, otherwise I could had clicked the thumbs up on your comment three hours ago on my android.

How do I know all this? Simple; I just read it on the internet. Is that really knowledge?

My point was that internet access to “Knowledge” is scary because it is too easy to access- so it is hard to sift the wheat from the chaff, the real from the fake, the first thing that comes up in a search…

*Internet phobia can be either “fear of the internet” or “fear of losing connection to the internet”.

*Some gentle turkeys can be seen in the tree branches opposite the botanical gardens. I heard report of a hard case turkey menacing on the grounds of CMC. Is it nature versus nurture or is it just a selective context by the human observers?


0

lemme see. A turkey is walking at you so you throw your head into the ground and play dead? I think you’re only supposed to do that with bears.


0
1 2