Wellington City Council Animal Control Officer, Steph Simon says she’s had her fair share of odd callouts over the years, but until recently she’d never had to wrangle a turkey on the job.
After the turkey was found and retrieved by her team in suburban Johnsonville, Steph says no one came to claim the bird.
“It had been on this woman’s property for a few days, staring at its own reflection in her sliding glass doors,” she says.
“It was quite friendly, so you could tell it had been hand raised. You could pet it. Comparatively, it was an easy catch, though I was using a new truck that day that didn’t have kennels, so I just had to plonk it in the back.”
Moa Point, though technically a dog shelter, also does look after chickens, roosters and other poultry.
It wasn’t the first time Colin, Chief Temperament Tester (pictured, above) has had to share Council accommodation with a feathered friend, having lived with a rooster previously, but Colin wasn’t a fan of the new arrival.
“I was in there every day and Colin got jealous. He’d just sit at the gate yowling. So I introduced him,” says Steph.
“At first, he was more interested in the turkey’s food, but then it moved, and he started trying to climb the walls to get away from it. He was fine apart from the initial shock.”
After eight days of vacation at the Moa Point Dog Pound, the turkey was taken to HUHA (Helping You Help Animals), where it now lives happily with a flock of other like-minded gobblers – and where it won’t be made into Christmas dinner!