The Battle of the Brush Turkey
I recently arrived home after a period away to discover we had been invaded by Bush Turkeys. The invasion has reduced what was a flourishing garden of native plants to a wasteland. Apart from a few well-established trees, there was no plant life left. There was, however, a mound. The mound had been constructed around a camelia tree than was now engulfed by it. The mound consisted of everything but the kitchen sink. Apart from all sorts of garden waste in the form of sticks, branches, leaves and soil there was a wide array of human refuse. Spoons, forks, toothbrushes, brush heads of all sorts, clothes pegs, coat hangers, rags, items of clothing (including underpants!), you name it.
After recovering (well sort of recovering) from the initial shock of seeing my much-loved garden totally destroyed, I decided it was time to try and do something about this. Surely there must be a way of getting rid of these invaders?
I rang my local council who politely told me they didn’t deal with invasions of this kind. I rang Wires who, after a finally got on to them, told me that brush turkeys weren’t part of their remit. I rang the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service who similarly were unable to help. I finally got on to a guy who told me he’d remove them at $500 a pop but that they’d be back in a month. Seeing as there were three bush turkeys operating in my garden, I didn’t think I could afford $1500.
I persisted with Parks and Wildlife and finally found some help from a person on the northern beaches who told me they couldn’t get into their office because the front door was blocked by a mound. She was very helpful and pointed me to the NSW Environment and Heritage site where my education on the ways of the bush turkey began in earnest.
Staring mournfully at the mound, I read that basically I couldn’t do anything until the eggs/egg had hatched. Apparently, there can be 20 eggs in one mound but only 1 in 200 eggs survives. It was going to be a waiting game. In the meantime, I followed their advice and began spreading chicken wire over what was left of the garden. I didn’t go near the mound but tried to protect the other areas they had dug up in the vain hope that something may grow back through the chicken wire. I fastened the chicken wire with tent pegs. I also invested in a water pistol. The advice was that the only way to discourage the invaders was to spray them with water. Of course, as the brush turkey is protected, I only spayed at their bodies, I didn’t want to do them any harm. While waiting for one of the eggs to hatch, I kept a respectful distance from the mound and went about trying to restore what was left of the garden.
Further research told me that brush turkeys were once common in the Sydney region, but they had literally been eaten out in the Depression. I searched in Mrs Beetons Family Cookbook for recipes on how to cook a brush turkey but, no cigar. For someone who had never heard of brush turkeys a year ago, my education was proceeding apace. One wag told me about a recipe for cooking the brush turkey that called for boiling the brush turkey for 10 hours with herbs and an old boot. After 10 hours you threw the turkey away and ate the boot. Shows how desperate people were in the Depression. They threw the boot out and ate the turkey.
Sightings of brush turkeys were made up the north coast in the 1930’s and then, rather like the cane toad, they began their march south. The have been common on the central coast for years. They have more than made their presence felt on the northern beaches in the last decade. Now they have advanced on the Sydney region and have begun attacking the inner city.
They can be seen strutting along the streets of the Inner West without a care in the world. As they are protected, there is nothing you can do about them, apart from the water pistol/cannon option. They rule the areas they have conquered with impunity. It occurred to me that if say, diamond pythons, began slithering up and down our inner-city streets, we might be less than accommodating. Diamond pythons are way less destructive than brush turkeys. They eat your rats, they don’t destroy your garden.
The good news is the chick has hatched and I can begin dismantling the mound, being careful not to harm any eggs I may come upon. What I have found are a few eggs with extremely smelly and very dead half hatched chicks. They are very difficult to dispose of.
Meanwhile the female who laid the egg has disappeared leaving a lone male to scratch over her patch. This particular bird is the definition of persistence. After I’ve spent a day fastening down bits of chicken wire, spreading soil around the garden, landscaping the area with branches, rocks and anything else that might deter a soil scratching brush turkey, I retire inside praying that I may have some hope of reclaiming my garden.
It’s a vain hope. The brush turkey is indomitable. It finds any nook or cranny with soil in it and feverishly scratches it out in an effort to rebuild the mound and destroy what might be left of my garden. It wouldn’t surprise me if it starts lifting rocks and scratches away at the soil underneath them.
This is going to be a long war.
I know how Henry V felt,
“Once more unto the breach dear friends
Once more…”