Video shows wild turkey chasing away Wisconsin mailman
It’s safe to say this mailman has had his fill of turkey this Thanksgiving season.
A video of an obsessed gobbler chasing a Wisconsin postal truck proves that dogs aren’t the only animals plaguing our nation’s mail carriers. Even worse, the “creeping Tom” apparently stalks the unfortunate postal worker every day, reports ABC WISN.
The clip was uploaded to Facebook Monday by Waukesha’s Sherry Michaels, who captioned it “our poor mail carrier has been dealing with this for a month!” Indeed, the footage shows the black-feathered fiend tenaciously pursuing mail carrier Jeff Byrne from box to box as he drives his route.
Bryne had been chased by everything from dogs to rabbits during his 20-year mail carrier career, however this was his first feathered fatal attraction.
The turkey, now christened “Jeff” by the internet, didn’t pay the US Postal Service employee much mind at first. However, “over the last month, he’s acquainted himself quite well with the truck, and started to follow me,” the bemused mail carrier told his local ABC affiliate.
At first, Byrne would tell the ornithological oddball to “get away from the truck” but now he’s “not even speaking to him.”
Fortunately, the turkey’s intentions seem benign so far. Byrne says that the bird is a male, and that his serial stalking might be more out of love than hate. But he admits to being startled last week.
“When I was coming back to the truck, he jumped up and flapped his wings,” says Byrne, who packs a bullhorn just in case the gawking gobbler gets too close.
Still, he refuses to speak ill of his unusual admirer. “It’s Thanksgiving,” Byrne says. “I can’t say he’s annoying too close to his holiday.”
Video of the incident has gone viral, racking up more than 7 million views in two days, and comments like “maybe he’s waiting for his winning letter from Publisher’s Clearinghouse!!”
One Facebook funnyman even joked that the turkey was waiting to hear if he’d been pardoned by the president in reference to Trump’s famous clucker clemency incident last Thanksgiving.