Brookline Turkeys To Be Featured In Documentary On Turkey Town

BROOKLINE, MA — If you've lived in Brookline for any amount of time you've likely had an encounter with them, or know someone who has: The wild flock of Brookline turkeys has attacked mail carriers. The animals have stood guard on street corners, attacking passing cars or anyone that dare get too close. The flock has its own Twitter and Instagram account. And now it will be featured in its own movie.

"Turkey Town" is the working title of the documentary film that Brookline-based filmmaker Aynsley Floyd is putting together about the confident gang of birds that rule things around here — and what effect that has on the rest of us.

Floyd said that she realized she wanted to make a documentary about the turkeys because of the way she saw friends and neighbors responding to their presence in their yards and neighborhoods.

"They have a very polarizing effect on people," Floyd said. "It had an interesting effect on our community and wanted to examine that in a film," she said.

She said she didn't remember seeing one as a child, and now they seem to be everywhere: from crossing the Green Line MBTA tracks on Beacon Street to Summit Avenue, where signs remind residents not to feed them.

Some people love them, some are petrified of getting attacked by the birds and some call them a nuisance. It led her to wonder how the turkeys —a protected species— came to be so prolific in Brookline.

She imagined that it might have something to do with climate change or development of habitat, but was surprised to learn there was something else at play.

Turns out: The state used to be teeming with the big feathered brutes. Then, in 1851, the last known bird killed off, according to MassWildlife. In the 1970s, wildlife experts brought 37 wild turkeys from New York and let them go in the Berkshires.

"It’s an interesting aspect of the story," she said. "I’m interested in people’s relationship to the natural world and particular how animals and people can coincide harmoniously."

The turkeys in town fit into that broader question.

Although she's been hatching the idea for years, she began her research in January in earnest, reaching out to residents in Brookline and Greater Boston to interview them for their stories, with a plan to be finished piecing donated video, photos and her own footage together by the end of the year. That's when she'll submit it as her final project for her master's degree in film and media art at Emerson College, and look for opportunities to share it with the broader public.

She's lined up interviews with ornithologists and Mass Wildlife experts and is hoping to connect with indigenous people to hear more about the bird's past role here.

Now that it's spring and the weather is warming up, she's started filming.

"It’s going very well, people are very enthusiastic about this idea, people want to contribute, I feel like almost everyone has a turkey story of one or another, loads of stories, all over the state," she said. And many of them are hilarious.

People have donated hours of video, and much of it has some Keystone Cop style humor to it.

"Watching someone run from a turkey — turkeys are very silly— it’s pretty comedic," she said.

But there are also unlikely and heartwarming stories she's collected, and those have surprised her most.

A music teacher outside of Brookline took in a malformed turkey and raised it, and the now full grown turkey lives on her property and frequently attends her music lessons, sitting on the couch and appearing to listen to violin lessons.

"That was pretty surprising," she said.

In the end, Floyd said she hopes the film will shed light on the wild bird and its unlikely comeback and how humans relate to the natural world and the effect they have on the community.

"Different people see it in different ways. It’s really fascinating," she said. "I’m hoping the film will be educational and entertaining... This is sort of a film that needs to be made."

Share your turkey stories with Floyd on Twitter @AynsleyFloyd, Facebook @turkeytownmovie, or email at turkeytownmovie@gmail.com.

Floyd's 2019 documentary, "The Mountain Dogs" about two dogs known to take a daily walk up a hiking trail in Vermont, was featured at the Woods Hole Film Festival. Another of her documentaries featured Brookline Housing authority residents "A New Lease."

Jenna Fisher is a news reporter for Patch. Got a tip? She can be reached at Jenna.Fisher@patch.com or by calling 617-942-0474. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram (@ReporterJenna). Have a something you'd like posted on the Patch? Here's how.