'Little turkey, big city': The rise and fall of NDG's streetwise fowl

The incongruity of a wild animal in the thick of the urban jungle can bring delight and surprise at any time; all the more so during a pandemic.

The most recent Montreal example is Butters, a wild turkey that took up residence west of downtown and was the subject of sightings in neighbourhoods like Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Montreal West and Côte Sait-Luc.

Butters' rise to fame was meteoric. The bird spawned a Facebook fan page that attracted hundreds of followers in a few weeks and, like a celebrity grabbing a burger in Hollywood, generated a torrent of social media posts whenever he appeared in public. 

"It was pretty fun, trying to find it each day with my parents," said Jeremy Biskin, an avid participant of the Facebook page. "Kind of like hide-and-seek, Turkey Edition."

Butters was a little ray of hope in the community, said Aurélie Frenette-Araujo, whose first sighting of the turkey was last December. "He just brought a smile to everybody's face. Even now, people are still talking about him."

Frenette-Araujo said "even now" because Butters, sadly, met his demise at a busy intersection a few days ago. 

A witness described Butters' death in a post on his fan page. Police had been trying to keep the turkey away from the intersection of Westminster Avenue and Côte-Saint-Luc Road. 

The driver of the car that struck the bird was, reportedly, himself a Butters fan.

"My heart is broken," said one of the 130 comments on the post. "I'm not OK," wrote another.

The witness wrote that the driver was distraught about the accident.

"I mean what can you do?" asked Frenette-Araujo, a master's student at McGill who lives in NDG.

"Little turkey, big city. Like, there's only so much we could do to try to protect him. And I think we tried our best and it was an accident."

Followed path of many a young suburbanite 

Alongside Butters in the Montreal Pantheon of Pandemic Fauna is Kéveune, a wild turkey that united Verdun residents during the pandemic's first wave last spring. 

There is also the late humpback whale that drew hundreds to the Old Port last last spring after veering far from its natural habitat and swimming up the St. Lawrence River.

Why that whale — which was shockingly never given a nickname (Humperdink?) — travelled to Montreal remains a mystery. So does the exact cause of its death, though scientists believe it could be due to "prolonged exposure to soft waters."

Whale sightings are exceedingly rare, but Barbara Frei, a wildlife biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada said there may yet more Kéveunes and Butters.

Frei said the wild turkey population is growing, a dynamic that results in young birds being "driven out to find their own place in the world."

As Montreal's suburbs expand into more natural areas, a green corridor is created, allowing the birds to make their way into the city.

"As we continue to take up their habitat, and move into the natural areas, this wildlife interaction is just something we're going to have to find a harmonious way of dealing with," Frei said.