Corinne Faulkner saved some feathers in a small glass vase on her windowsill and memorialized Judy's death with a headstone that sits prominently on her front lawn, capped with a ceramic turkey.
The wild bird had shown up one morning last year in this suburb north of Boston and proceeded to wreak havoc, snarling traffic by boldly crisscrossing busy Route 3.
"It liked to chase the buses and the mail lady, but she didn't seem to mind," said Faulkner, 42, who named the male turkey Judy, after a friend.
Faulkner and her neighbors fed it cracked corn and peanuts, and her boyfriend escorted it across the street as though he were a crossing guard. But one day last year, two shots rang out in the neighborhood and the turkey was never seen again. Faulkner believes town officials had it killed, but no one seems to know for sure.
A thrill to some, a nuisance to others
The return of New England's wild turkeys is to some a welcome natural wonder and a triumph of ecological management. To others, it's a nuisance.
Here in the state where Thanksgiving began, wild turkeys had all but vanished for more than a century. Until the recent resurgence, the last recorded bird was reported killed on Mount Tom in western Massachusetts in 1851. Five years later, nature lover and famed Bay State resident Henry David Thoreau lamented the loss in the following journal passage:
"When I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here — the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc. — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country."
But the turkeys' demise, though not exaggerated, proved to be impermanent. Nationwide, the population of the once-dwindling species now stands at about 6 million.
In Massachusetts, a reintroduction program has been wildly successful — too successful, some say — with 18,000 to 20,000 birds now roaming the state's back country and occasionally its back yards, giving residents both a thrill and a minor headache.
Don't feed the turkeys
"The problems come when people feed them. Then the turkeys get comfortable and you hear about them chasing people around, roosting on houses and getting into vegetable gardens," said James E. Cardoza, a turkey biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
Male wild turkeys, also called toms, weigh about 16 to 24 pounds, and their heads turn bright red when they strut. Females, called hens, are smaller and more drably colored.
In the early 1970s, Cardoza began trapping turkeys in New York, taking an initial flock of 37 and releasing them in Massachusetts.
On a Web site, he offers advice on "preventing conflicts with turkeys," starting with: Don't feed them. He also advocates covering over shiny or reflective objects that attract the birds.
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"Don't let turkeys intimidate you," advises another guideline. "Don't hesitate to scare or threaten a bold, aggressive turkey with loud noises, swatting with a broom or water sprayed from a hose. A dog on a leash is also an effective deterrent."
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The turkeys' distinctive red forms have recently been spotted strolling through the tony Boston neighborhood of Back Bay and strutting in the vicinity of Fenway Park. Two summers ago, an academically inclined turkey took up residence in Cambridge's Kendall Square, home to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Close contact
But it is in suburban towns, where development meets patches of woodlands, that the interactions between man and bird have been most common and problematic. Sightings are frequent during the spring mating season, when male turkeys' aggressive attempts to impress females can lead to confrontations with people.
In Melrose, north of Boston, three males and two females settled near the train tracks last year and paraded along Main Street, flashing their tail feathers at anyone who got too close. After they caused a three-car pileup on the busy Lynn Fells Parkway, animal control officer Renee Chisholm had seen enough.
"I called Animal Rescue, but they wouldn't come. Finally the birds just took off," she said.
But her problems weren't over. "Now we've got two more sets of them in town. They've been well-behaved, but they can also be dangerous. They're not at all afraid of people. You beep your horn at them, and they stand there like, 'What are you going to do now?' "
In Westwood, southwest of Boston, town officials considered passing a bylaw banning residents from feeding turkeys after reports that one neighborhood, where someone left food for the birds, had been overrun by 50 or more.
"In the end, we just went to the person and said they had to stop feeding them or else they would never go away," said Nancy Hyde, a town official. "So far, it seems to have worked. Maybe they won't come back."
Faulkner, in Woburn, who said she still misses Judy's daily visits, knows better.
"They thought they had gotten rid of the problem by shooting it," she said. "But then this spring, I looked out my window and there were 12 more."