It's not quite Hitchcock movie territory, but it's close.
Luckily for her, Edna Geisler doesn't have to deal with thousands of malevolent birds, but one particularly ornery fowl is making life rather difficult for the Commerce Township resident.
As the Associated press reports, Geisler has been facing daily bullying from a wild turkey "willing to bump, scratch and harass her" if she so much as sets foot in her front yard.
According to the Detroit Free Press, the adult male turkey nicknamed Godzilla retreats to the woods near Geisler's home at night, but spends its days aggressively defending the yard against intruders including Geisler herself who has been forced to alter her schedule to avoid attack.
The Free Press writes:
Michigan has about 200,000 wild turkeys, said Tim Payne, a wildlife supervisor for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Most of them are terrified of humans. Some, apparently, want people to be terrified of them. "That's an adult bird. It's trying to defend the area or the territory," Payne said. "They can be aggressive in terms of defending the territory..." His advice: open a large umbrella and use it to drive the bird not just off the porch but off the property.
A video from the Free Press's Eric Seals shows Godzilla the turkey in all his feathered fury:
Edna Geisler isn't the first to experience a wild turkey's wrath, however.
If you listen to the clip below, you can hear Michigan Radio reporter Mark Brush fending off a turkey rampage of his own in Wood County, Ohio.
http://environmentreport.org/audio/turkeyclip.mp3
This American Life also ran a segment around Thanksgiving last year recounting the story of one turkey who managed to terrorize an entire town in 2008.
-John Klein Wilson, Michigan Radio Newsroom
