Before Reading:
What do I know about turkeys???
Prediction: How does a turkey end up going through a windshield?
During reading:
Ashley H. Grant, Associated Press
Tom Reardon never
saw it coming.
It was an early
Sunday morning, and he was making his usual leisurely drive to work. The sun
was rising. From the corner of his eye, he saw a turkey on the side of the
road.
Prediction: What would you expect to happen if you saw a turkey on the side of the raod? Since the article is titled “Talking turkey about turkey through windshield”, what can you expect?
"As I'm
turning back to look where I'm going, there was just an explosion," he
said. "I never saw it hit the windshield. I remember seeing a big brown
blob. . . . I thought I hit a deer."
For a moment,
everything went black. Then through the shattered windshield and the glass in
his eyes, he spied the first clue to his attacker: "I saw the talons and
the claws."
Sprawled across
the front seat of the car was a 27-pound turkey with a wingspan of at least 6
feet -- a different turkey from the one he'd spotted less than a minute
earlier.
Prediction:
What will happen next? What kind of damage can a 27 pound turkey do to a car?
"This poor
guy," said paramedics manager Mark Dascalos, who was among those who
arrived on the scene and saw the damage. "The turkey was a monster. It was
just humongous."
Reardon's story is
one in a growing number of such collisions that have occurred as the state's
wild turkey population has swelled to 45,000. The first successful stockings
happened in 1973, when biologists traded 85 ruffed grouse for 29 wild turkeys
from Missouri, releasing them in Houston County, in the southeast corner of the
state.
Over the past
three decades, the turkeys' range has expanded to cover most of the southern
half of the state. This year, about 25,000 permits were available for a series
of seasons that began this month.
While it's a
success story for the birds and hunters, some drivers haven't yet trained
themselves to watch for the expanding flocks, and many have no inkling how much
damage the birds can cause.
Prediction:
What is the potential for damage? How can this problem be solved?