The Sault’s Shawn Carroll, his fiancée Dana and their one-year-old son like to go on relaxing drives around town. But a trip along Landslide Road Wednesday afternoon was an unprecedented experience for the young family.
With Carroll at the wheel, Dana in the front passenger seat and their son in the rear of the vehicle, a large turkey unexpectedly perched itself on the hood of Carroll’s car for several minutes.
“We usually drive by Hiawatha and we ended up seeing these four big birds on the side of the road,” Carroll told SooToday.
“I thought: ‘Are they what I think they are?’ So I pulled off to the side of the road and put my four-ways on. I rolled down my window and I was making turkey noises and I recorded a video of myself doing that. I stopped recording and they went around the back of my car and I couldn’t see where they had gone.”
With Carroll not wanting to put the car in reverse and harm the birds, they came around to the front of the car.
“I rolled down my window to call them and I was making turkey noises and then one of them jumped on top of my car and I thought: ‘I’ve got to start recording this.’”
“People were driving by and taking pictures. In the video you can hear me saying: ‘How do I get this turkey off my car?’”
Carroll couldn’t accelerate to get rid of the bird because the three other turkeys were directly in front of the vehicle.
“I know that turkeys can have bad tempers, they have claws and they’re pretty big so I didn’t want to take that risk of getting out of the car and trying to remove it. Someone told me later that I should’ve turned on my wiper blades and spook it away but I didn’t want to be too aggressive about it.”
Carroll said his infant son didn’t appear to be alarmed — but his fiancée was shocked.
“It was like: ‘What are we going to do? There are people pulling up behind us.’”
Carroll said those motorists seemed to take it all in stride and passed around his vehicle with smiles on their faces.
“A guy pulled up in a truck and he started making turkey calls and then shortly after that the turkey jumped off my car and went away.”
Carroll said he’s glad none of the turkeys were hurt, no one was overly traumatized and that the bird didn't appear to damage his car’s paint job.
“I’ve seen turkeys in the bush but I’ve never seen turkeys on the side of the road like that and I’ve never had any animal jump on my car like that before. Ever.”
Looking back, Carroll said “it was a funny situation. We just didn’t know what to do.”
“Thanksgiving came early,” he laughed, adding he’ll never look at turkeys in quite the same way.
“It’s a memory that I’ll look back on and I’ll definitely show my son the video when he’s old enough.”
