A Wild Turkey Flew Through My Window

Last Friday night it was like any other typical night.  I picked Scarlett up from school at 3:30 and she hung out with Jack while I made dinner.  We all ate together and then Jack went to bed at 6:30.  Scarlett and I had talked earlier that week about making a dessert pizza for a fun Friday night treat.

I had the oven pre-heating to bake the crust.  While it was pre-heating, I walked through my dining room and saw a few turkeys walking across my backyard.  I live in a woodsy neighborhood and it's not uncommon to see coyotes, foxes, deers, and wild turkeys at any given time.  It's always fun to see the wildlife and it never gets old. Scarlett was in my dining room which is right off the kitchen.  All of a sudden I hear the loudest sound of breaking glass and her screaming.  I couldn't even process what happened.  I see a turkey running across the floor and tons of broken glass everywhere.  My entire dining room window was broken.  I don't mean like a small crack, I mean the entire window was GONE.  Luckily, Scarlett was standing against a wall behind the window or else she would have gotten incredibly hurt.

She is hysterical and I took her upstairs to calm down while my husband Jay tried to get the turkey out.  He opened the front door and the turkey would not leave.  Scarlett is screaming that the turkey would destroy the house.  All I can do is calm her down and say it would be ok.  I didn't know what the turkey would exactly do.  Would it fly everywhere and knock things down? I was picturing scratched up walls and furniture with just mass destruction. Our dog Lynnie was attacking the turkey and Jay was trying to get a leash on her to get her out of the way.  The turkey was just lying on the floor being eaten alive.  Did I mention my entire downstairs was covered in loose feathers?

Once Scarlett calmed down, we came out of my room to see what was happening.  Our staircase at the bottom has a baby gate which actually came in handy for the situation.  We sat at the top watching Jay and we all came to the conclusion that we needed help getting the turkey out.  He called animal control and there was nobody who could help at that moment.  Jay called the police and within a few minutes an officer was at our front door.  Scarlett liked the police coming over and thought it was exciting.  Oh, kids! The officer was able to trap the hiding turkey into a recycling can and release it back into the woods by our house. The policeman joked about it being a wild Friday night for us.

Once the officer left, we started to clean up our house.  There was just so much glass and feathers that it was overwhelming.  I swept everything up as much as I could.  Jay vacuumed after to ensure that the tiny shards of glass were gone.  It seems like as much as you try to clean up broken glass, there's always microscopic fragments hiding! I washed the floors after to ensure that they were clean since wild turkeys are not clean.

From start to finish, it was about a 4.5 hour ordeal.  We forced Scarlett to go to sleep at around 10, when her normal bedtime is 8:30.  Jay and I went to bed at 11:30.

He put a tarp up on the window until it was fixed.  I was nervous envisioning some other animal coming inside.  It was eerie knowing you have an open window and sleeping with it tarped up.  The window was $400 to fix which I would have much preferred to spend elsewhere.

I posted about the incident to inform and warn others on my town's Facebook page.  A local reporter wanted to speak to me about the story which will be published this weekend in my town's Newspaper.  A photographer came by to take a picture of the broken window.  What a crazy story, right?

We do have some scratched floors from the turkey and the broken glass.  My wooden hutch has some cuts on one leg too.  Lastly, my painted windowseat in the kitchen is all cut up as well.  I'll need someone to sand it down and repaint it.  It could have been much worse though. We're glad we're ok!

Here's to hoping we never have to deal with this again!