Wild Turkeys

choi

Kirk Johnson. Barging into the House, Definitely Not for Dinner. New York Times, Nov 22, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/wild-turkey-cities.html

Quote:

(a) "A few weeks before Thanksgiving last year * * * Ashley Kruse noticed that glass from a second-story window of her house in Council Bluffs, Iowa, had shattered onto her driveway. She walked upstairs to find a room covered in blood and turkey feathers. A turkey had smashed its way inside, for reasons only a turkey could say.

" 'He left a mess, but he was no longer there [had survived the crash and departed],' said Ms Kruse, who works for the city. 'It was disgusting and hilarious at the same time.'

"The turkey-trashed room had to be repainted and recarpeted, she said.

(b) "As a nation, we have done this to ourselves. Starting in the early 1950s, wild turkeys were reintroduced into states where they had fallen on hard times as their habitat shrunk, and newly introduced — often with enthusiastic state participation — into places like the Pacific Northwest, where they had never existed in nature. [Altogether, 220,000 turkeys were moved, the next paragraph says.]

(c) "Every state but Alaska now has a hunting season on wild turkeys, which have an estimated population of about 6.2 million across the nation, up from about 1.3 million in the mid-1970s.

(d) "Texas has the most turkeys in the nation, with an estimated population of half a million, followed by Alabama, Kansas and Wisconsin. As the birds vanished from most of their range in the early 20th century, they held strong in a few places: Missouri, New York, South Carolina. So many of the modern descendants, spread far and wide through turkey-loving relocation efforts, are transplants from those states

(e) "Hunting in most urban areas is also not an option, though the city of Council Bluffs in Iowa has recently allowed bowhunting within city limits in an effort to control the birds.

(d) "The town of Brookline, near Boston, now has a tutorial on turkey life and psychology on its website.

" 'Wild turkeys have a "pecking order" and people who act fearfully will be treated as subordinates,' the site advises.

"If you are approached by a turkey, the website says, 'do not back away or turn your back.' Rather, it says, 'Step toward the turkey and act confidently.'

My comment:
(a)
(i) There is no need to read the rest.
(ii) There is a photo that appears both in print and online: a pedestrian viewing wild turkeys in front of and behind him. The print caption of that photo: "In Staten Island. The birds have few predators. 'They've got it made,' a wildlife official said."

(b)
(i) Council Bluffs, Iowa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_Bluffs,_Iowa
(2010 census: 62,230; the most populous Omaha suburb; is located on the east bank of the Missouri River, across from Omaha, Nebraska

section 1 History, section 1.1 1804–1843 - Pottawatomi Reservation Caldwell's Camp: "The first Council Bluff name (singular) was actually on the Nebraska side of the river at Fort Atkinson (Nebraska) about 20 miles northwest of the current Council Bluffs. It was named by Lewis and Clark for a bluff where they met with the Otoe tribe on August 2, 1804.

* Missouri River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_River
(is the longest river in North America: 2,341 miles (3,767 km) before entering the Mississippi River north of St Louis, Missouri [Mississippi River 2,320 miles (3,730 km): en.wikipedia.org] )
(ii) bluff (n): "a steep cliff, bank, or promontory"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bluff
(iii) Stock Photo - Mormon Baptism Services in the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, Iowa, 1800s. Alamy, undated (Image ID: DDBRGP).
www.alamy.com/stock-photo-mormon ... -iowa-59881606.html

(c) Quotation (b) will be much easier understood if one understands its structure: "wild turkeys were reintroduced into states where they had [once been], and newly introduced * * * into places [they had never been]."

(d) "Twenty-one turkeys had settled on the backyard playset. The animals stayed a half-hour, then left."
(i) playset (n): "3: North American  a piece of outdoor play equipment incorporating various elements, such as a swing, slide, and climbing frame"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/playset
(ii) Search images.google.com with that word and you will immediately recognize it.

(e) " 'They've [Turkey have] got it made — all the habitat they want and very little predation,' said Madonna Luers, a spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife."
(i) "To have it made (1955) is American English colloquial."  Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
(ii) To have it made/ get it made/ have got it made.

"have it made  informal
a: to be assured or confident of success  <With a straight A average he's got it made>
b: to have achieved success, especially wealth, status, or the like"
Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc 2017
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/have--it--made

Why? See next.
(iii) made (adj): "assured of success  <a made man> —usually used in the phrase have it made"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/made

(f) Quotation (e): "Hunting in most urban areas is also not an option." This is because cramping space in cities easily translates into a bystander's injury.