Do you suppose the birds can sense it's Thanksgiving?

CBS Boston:

Neighbors are on the offensive in Brookline after what some residents are describing as aggressive turkeys.

"They were attacking the vehicle," Karen Halvorson said outside her home in the Aspinwall Hill neighborhood.

After getting in her truck, a neighbor came and ran the birds off but it didn't stop there.

"Then, the turkeys came and started attacking my front door," she said.

A second run-in came a few weeks ago as she walked nearby.

"I looked back and three of them charged me," she explained.

She moved to the center of the street to avoid the animals, but it wasn't enough.

"The turkey flew in my face and scratched my neck," she said.

Halvorson refuses to give up her walks so she has taken precautions.

"I went down to the hiking store and I got a hiking stick with a big ball on top of it. I walk with it all the time and now I never go without my phone," she said.

At different spots near the Halvorson house, Karen's husband cut piles of sticks. Those, too, are for protection.

"At least we can throw a stick at them and run into the house," said Halvorson.

Complaints to Brookline Police about wild turkeys have doubled in the past two months.

"Some people going to work and they've been chased by turkeys," said Brookline Animal Control Officer Pierre Verrier.

He spends nearly every morning trying to keep the animals away from students at Brookline High School.

"Sometimes I even take a tennis racket to try and shoo them out," he said.

Firearm restrictions prevent residents from dealing with these birds in a common sense way; turning them into a delicious repast. Still, there's always archery practice using the birds as live targets. And what's wrong with kids today? Don't those children in Brookline have any B-B guns? (I am dating myself there.)

No doubt the town council will find a humane and politically correct way to remove the birds as a threat to residents. A sad result if one recalls the way in which these residents' ancestors would have responded to the problem.

A good old fashioned turkey shoot.