Turkey plows through window of Spokane home

The guest bedroom at Robyn Holms’ house needs a new window. Maybe new carpet, too.

What it doesn’t need is another visit from a wild turkey.

On the morning of July 11, Holms let her two Maltese dogs, Max and Blu, outside at her home in the Sunset Hill neighborhood.

A hen turkey was standing in the yard, and that’s where the trouble started.

Max, expressing a perfectly normal canine urge, gave chase. The turkey, expressing a perfectly normal avian urge, took flight.

But instead of seeking refuge in a tree, the turkey hurtled itself at a panel of double-pane glass.

“I saw it hit at the same time I heard the big crash,” Holms said this week. “It had gone right through the window.”

She took the dogs into the house and locked them in a bathroom. Then, she went to survey the scene in the guest bedroom.

At first, she didn’t see the bird. She thought maybe it jumped back out the window or, worse, absconded to another part of the house.

“All of a sudden it jumped up from the other side of the bed,” Holms said.

She backed out of the room and shut the door, sequestering the intruder while she pondered a reasonable question: Now what?

“I was not ready to go tackle a live turkey by myself,” she said.

She called the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and told a dispatcher what happened. There was laughter, naturally, but WDFW was ready to help.

Within an hour, WDFW biologist Matt Brinkman and wildlife conflict specialist Reagan Harris were at Holms’ house.

Holms showed them to the guest bedroom and they went in to see the bird.

Before long, Brinkman was cradling it in his arms and they were walking outside.

They checked the bird for injuries. There was some blood and some scrapes, and some feathers had fallen off. Otherwise, the hen was fine.

“We set her on the ground and she flew away,” Harris said.

There are a lot of wild turkeys in Spokane. The non-native birds were originally stocked in Washington decades ago, and have since made their presence known all over town.

Usually, they seem to understand that they are outside birds. Harris, who often takes calls about wildlife in unwanted places, said it’s possible the agency has dealt with a similar situation in the past, but not in recent memory.

“For me, this is a first,” Harris said.

It’s not unusual for birds to fly into windows. Harris said they get confused by their own reflection. Generally, they make a loud thud and life goes on.

When it’s a 20-pound turkey, which can fly at a speed of up to 40 mph at times, the story ends differently.

In this case, it meant a butterball-sized hole in a window.

After WDFW set the turkey free, Holms examined the damage.

“The room was just a disaster,” she said.

Glass everywhere. Blood on the carpet. Piles of feathers. Some poop.

Holms spent about a half-day cleaning the mess up. Carpet cleaners came, but she’s still not satisfied.

“I think I’m going to have to buy new carpet,” she said.

The hole in the window is covered with a piece of Plexiglas for now. A permanent fix is going to take time.

The turkey is back to roaming the neighborhood. Holms has seen her since.

It’s an easy bird to spot.

“I know it’s her because there’s one mother turkey around that doesn’t have many feathers,” Holms said.