Fans love Smoke, who puts the ‘wild’ in wild turkey. But Wisconsin cops want him gone
Some of the folks living in Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin are having a hard time going cold turkey — and the local police have had enough.
A wild turkey that first showed up in town last spring is still hanging around, mostly because people keep feeding him, according to Ashwaubenon Public Safety’s social media posts warning people to stop.
Police want him gone because, they say, he chases and threatens pedestrians, runs out into traffic creating traffic hazardsand, back in July, he even chased their squad cars.
The police posted a video of the alleged assault by gobbler on the department’s Facebook page.
But some residents don’t want him to high-tail it out of town. They nicknamed the bird “Smoke” and created a Facebook page to keep tabs on “the mayor of Ashwaubenon.”
“Anyone seen Smoke today,” a post on his Facebook page asked on Monday.
“About 4:15pm he ‘flew’ across the center median and came after my Drivers Ed. Car. Freaked out my student,” wrote a man named Tony Bloom. “Maybe he thought I was flaunting my feathers for the hens with the sign on the roof (guess The Mayor doesn’t like competition)!”
The feathered felon is four feet tall and weighs 20 pounds, according to Fox 6 in Milwaukee.
He is known by his eminence front.
“Yes he is a male. He fans out and struts. I am not sure about everyone’s pictures. But Smoke is definitely acts different from the other turkeys in the area,” Facebook user Tammy Christine Stumbris posted on his fan page.
In light of Smoke’s public roasting by the police, one of Smoke’s fans posted pictures last week of T-shirts that read: “I Stand with Mayor Smokey.”
“Recently there has been a lot of publicity given to the turkey now named Smoke who has his own Facebook Group called Smoked Turkey-Mayor of Ashwaubenon,” the police wrote a few days ago on Facebook. “Please keep in mind that it’s never a good idea to feed wild animals as they should be self sufficient.”
Oh, and by the way, the police cautioned, “Ashwaubenon Ordinances prohibit feeding Deer and Turkeys and can land you with a $187 fine for doing so.”
The main message, police wrote, “is please STOP feeding “Smoke” you will be doing him a much greater favor.”
From what some of Smoke’s fans have told reporters, that warning went in one ear and out the other.
“I love my Mr. Turkey,” resident Renee Moore, who lives where Smoke tends to hang out near where Morris Avenue and Hilltop Drive intersect, told the Green Bay Gazette.
She told the newspaper she doesn’t care when he chases her car.
Her fellow Ashwaubenon-ite, Tammy Czachor, told WBAY in Green Bay that she sees Smoke wandering around the neighborhood a few days each week.
Neighbors told the TV station they think Smoke didn’t get along with the flocks that passed through and terrorized folks in the spring, and somehow got left behind by himself.
“I think it’s like his hobby to go out there when it’s like busy and people are getting home from work and trying to rush through traffic. He somehow finds the time to do it on busy hours,” Czachor told WBAY.
“He seems to be like estranged from them, so he’s kind of off on his own. . . . Maybe it’s because he is a little obnoxious, but I think that’s endearing to him.”
But that’s exactly why police want Smoke to scram.
“We’ve had people in cars stopping and throwing bread out the windows and things like that. Don’t do that. It’s not doing that turkey any favors. It’s teaching that turkey to stay on the roadways, and that’s going to get that turkey killed,” police captain Jody Crocker said to WBAY.
During a Green Bay Packers game last month, Smoke blocked a particularly busy intersection and police had to head to the scene and shoo him out of the way, Crocker told the Gazette.
Crocker told the newspaper he worries that Smoke will wind up a “dead bird” if he gets hit by a car.
Smoke’s fans panicked when word went around that he had been “captured” by the state’s Department of Natural Resources, WBAY reported last week.
It wasn’t true, but not from lack of trying.
“The DNR and Ashwaubenon’s animal control were out ... but they were unable to round up the unusual suspect,” WBAY reported.