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Community Corner

Water Mill's Resident Turkey Found With Legs Bound by Tape

Turkey will be released in Sag Harbor.

A turkey that took up residence on the Water Mill Green a couple months ago was found struggling with its feet bound together by blue painter's tape on Tuesday morning.

The famous wild turkey did not suffer any life-threatening injuries, but it was taken to the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays and will soon be relocated.

"One of our volunteers went and got him and we took the tape off," said Jojo Caverly, a veterinary technician and wildlife rehabilitator.

Caverly said they feared the turkey's legs could have been broken, but the only injury it suffered was broken feathers. Some were blood feathers, which are still growing and bleed when broken.

Wildlife Rescue Center volunteers and staff have tried to capture the turkey before so they could relocate it to a safer area, free from traffic, but attempts were unsuccessful.

"Occasionally, it darted back and forth in the street," Ginnie Frati, the executive director of the Wildlife Rescue Center, said. She even went there personally to try and capture it, but as soon as she took a blanket out of her car, he ran, she said. "He wanted to be there for some reason."

Caverly said the person who bound the turkey must have caught it off guard. "It was the dead of night," she said. "He was probably sleeping."

Jason Klinge, a contractor who helped build the rescue facility in Hampton Bays, discovered the turkey Tuesday morning with its legs wrapped together by tape and called it in.

Klinge called shortly after 8 a.m.  The turkey was spotted walking freely as recently as 6:30 a.m., according to Jane Gill, the volunteer who retrieved the bird. Gill said she spoke with a post office worker in Sagaponack who said she passed through Water Mill at the time and saw the turkey chasing a man.

The turkey is currently sharing a pen with a female turkey that came to the Wildlife Rescue Center with a broken pelvis a month ago after being hit by a car on Montauk Highway in Southampton, and two orphaned poults from East Quogue that have been there since May 28. The female turkey was in a sling up until recently, and is just now relearning how to walk. She began fostering the poults. "Once she was out of the sling, we tried to put them together and it worked out beautifully," Caverly said.

While the hen still has more rehabilitation to go, the tom turkey is expected to be released Wednesday.

Penny Moser, who is a Wildlife Rescue Center board member, has offered her Sag Harbor property as the Water Mill turkey's new home.

"There's always a flock of turkeys in her yard," Frati said of Moser's property, which is on a cul-de-sac with no through traffic.

"We don't want to take him back where he came from," Frati said. "Someone will hit him."

Frati said she did not alert the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals about the turkey being bound, because she does not know that the person who did it actually had ill intent. "I don't know whether it was abuse, or whether someone was trying to capture him."

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