Thursday, 4:30 PM
A wild turkey in JP? Or Thanksgiving dinner making a getaway?
By Andrew Ryan, Globe Correspondent
A nervous turkey with brown feathers and a long white neck waddled into the Jamaicaway this morning and backed up traffic for a 1/4 mile.
About 30 cars had to wait patiently while the bird stopped in the middle of the road just after 8 a.m. The turkey, perhaps disorientated by the looming holiday, paused near the Centre Street rotary long enough to slow the morning commute.
"The first thing I thought of was that the turkey wanted to escape with it being Thanksgiving week," said Jim Connelly, a publicist who was driving from his Rosindale home to his office in Back Bay. "But who's heard of a turkey farm in JP?"
Boston police did not receive any reports of escaped turkeys this morning in Jamaica Plain, according to a department spokeswoman. There have, however, been other recent incidents in which turkeys crossed roads in and around the neighborhood.
The Jamaica Plain Gazette reported in its Nov. 17 edition that a wild turkey was spotted on a fence on Wachusett Street. That bird later tried to enter a nearby school and eventually crossed Hyde Park Avenue.
As odd as it may seem, wild turkeys are actually quite common in the city in neighborhoods such as Jamaica Plain with ample green space. For some residents, the birds have even become a nuisance.
That wasn't the case in 1851, when the state's last recorded wild turkey was shot atop Mount Tom, and Massachusetts went more than a century before the population was revived, according to the state's wildlife website. Several reintroduction efforts failed, until the state imported 37 wild turkeys from New York between 1972 and 1973 and watched the numbers grow.
The estimated fall population of turkeys now exceeds 15,000 birds.
Last week, the Massachusetts Audubon Society reported that five wild turkeys were spotted at the Boston Nature Center in Mattapan. In April 2002, a wild turkey was seen on a rooftop behind Brimmer Street in Beacon Hill.
This morning, it was not clear where the turkey was heading. Peering through his windshield, Connelly estimated that the bird weighed seven, maybe eight pounds.
"I though 'Oh my god,'" Connelly said. "Where is this turkey going to go this time of year?"
