Jan 22, 2019 5 min read

After a spring and summer vacation, an unofficial “traffic controller” has returned to work his Chartiers Township intersection, and the neighborhood is torn as to whether he’s a lovable mascot or a menace.

Homer the wild turkey has returned home to the corner of Allison Hollow and McGovern roads. He’s picked up where he left off last year, standing in the middle of the road, pecking at vehicles and gobbling up attention from the neighborhood.

“You have to drive around him because he doesn’t move,” said one neighbor, Linda Hughes. “He’ll move when he feels like it. Everyone’s given up on honking at him to get him to move, because it just doesn’t work.”

Residents in that neighborhood either love him or hate him. Hughes is pro-Homer, and said that his stubbornness has actually slowed traffic down at the three-way stop intersection.

“The funny part is that he slows people down,” she said. “We call him our traffic controller. Cars might have to drive around him, but he’s not hurting anyone. It’s residential neighborhood – it’s not busy.”

Some residents claim that Homer has chased them, but he’s selective. For example, Homer, a fugitive from the Pennsylvania Game Commission, doesn’t usually chase Game Warden Daniel Sitler, who has been trying to catch him for more than a year.

“It doesn’t want to get close enough to me,” he said. “I don’t know if he just senses what I’m trying to do. He’s smart enough to realize I’m not a person he wants to be around.”

Sitler said the commission has tried using a net gun and a fishing net to catch Homer, to no avail. Sitler said Homer’s spring disappearance is normal for turkeys because that’s their mating season. Since Homer’s return, however, Sitler said he’s received “numerous complaints” from several residents that Homer has chased them and acted aggressively.

“The major cause is someone’s feeding it and more or less trying to tame it,” he said. “The bird has habituated itself to people. He has not actually attacked a person, but has been aggressive enough where people have had to throw things at it to shoo it away.”

Sitler strongly encouraged drivers and residents to stop feeding the bird, saying that “wildlife needs to be wildlife.” He said his main concern is public safety. He said if Homer was to cause any injuries, they may need to switch from nonlethal means of capturing him to shooting him.

“If he causes injury to any person, at that point we’ll switch to other options,” he said.

Chartiers Township Police Chief James Horvath said his department has received many complaints about the turkey, who he said has been “nothing but trouble” for them.

One McGovern Road resident, who did not want to be named, said she recently encountered Homer on her way to her garage from her mailbox. He stood in front of her and stretched out his neck.

“I was screaming. I was terrified,” she said. “He extended his neck and it was up to my shoulders. If that thing would peck at me, you don’t know what kind of damage he could do to a person.”

She said she’s seen him “weaving in and out of traffic” around 7 a.m., his usual traffic shift. She feels that Homer is a potential danger to residents, drivers and himself, and that he should be captured and “put in a circus or something.”

“I feel bad for the poor thing, because he doesn’t realize how terrifying he can be,” she said.

Another woman who lives on that road, who also didn’t want to be named, said she wishes Homer could be relocated 200 miles from her. She said she has to take her car from the garage to the mailbox because Homer has “taken over the mailbox.” She said he’s run at her and she’s had to throw mail at him to shoo him away.

“To me, he’s a menace,” she said. “I don’t want him hurt, I just want him gone. Maybe I’m a big chicken, but I’m afraid of him.”

Hughes said someone has been throwing water bottles at Homer, who typically sits on a patch of grass in front of a row of townhouses on McGovern. She’s seen water bottles all over the grass there.

“I just wish people could coexist with nature,” she said. “This is a wild turkey just doing his thing. Just because it’s a residential neighborhood people think, Let’s just get rid of him.’ He should be left alone.”

Hughes argued that “most of the neighborhood” loves Homer. He even has his own Facebook page, “Homer the Allison Turkey.” She suggested that instead of trying to capture Homer, moving him out of his habitat or shooting him, that the Game Commission provide more education to the neighborhood about wild turkeys and how to coexist with them.

“I just wish they would do more education and tell people to not antagonize him,” she said. “He’s only here for a few weeks in the winter. The less we intervene, the better for Homer and everybody.”