I live in a place called Turkey Thicket in DC. Apparently, according to my neighbor whose family has lived in the area for centuries, it used to be a huge breeding ground for the gobblers. However, in the 17 years that my family has lived there we have only had one interaction with a wild turkey. Now all you can find about the “thicket” is that they recently built a recreation center and a playground.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Turkey+Thicket+Playground/@38.9389025,-76.9936344,16.98z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xedd10ebe5d4ee677

I found this interesting in comparison to Sterba when he talked about the issue of novelty to nuisance. He says “Wildlife biologists were surprised by how easily turkeys adapted to people… they became habituated to feeding near homes and lost their fear of people, sometimes becoming aggressive” (156). The turkey I saw was definitely one of the skittish ones It ran away from me and all of the people that stopped to look it. I remember being surprised at how fast the fat bird could go and how aggressive my neighbors got in wanting the turkey out of their yard. To them it was a nuisance, a threat to their gardens, as if the turkey would cause more damage than the squirrels, possums, raccoons, and deer already had. It was confusing to see them bat it away when I knew that this was their home as well. After reading Sterbas chapter I realized that the turkey I saw, sometime in the 2000’s, was probably a direct result of the conservation efforts.