Turkey didn’t have a good read on library entrance

It’s National Library Week, and Niederkorn Library Director Tom Carson joked that one turkey was so excited to check out the books at the Port library Monday morning that it missed the entrance.

The turkey hen instead crashed into an upper-story window above the south doors to the library about 11:30 a.m., shattering the glass.

“It was loud,” Assistant Library Director Rosalia Slawson said. “The staff at the desks said they jumped 10 feet, and the patrons thought someone threw a brick or there was a gunshot.

“You could see this huge break in the upper window.”

Slawson, who was in her office at the time, said a colleague asked her to call police because someone had crashed into the library.

Glass from the window was strewn across the desks and floor, she said, as well as on the ground and bushes outside.

“I’m really glad no one was sitting there studying,” Slawson said. “They could have been seriously injured.”

The hen didn’t fare as well. It was found dead on the ground next to a blooming daffodil.

Carson noted that the windows have an anti-glare film that stopped the turkey from coming through the window.

The turkey, he added, was a large one, making it especially amazing that it was able to fly into a window 25 to 30 feet  off the ground.

“I’ve never seen a turkey fly that high,” Carson said.

Slawson said the library was the subject of quite a bit of attention after the incident.

“Most people said, ‘I didn’t know turkeys could fly,’ or ‘I didn’t know they could fly that high,’” she said.

One family passing by said they had recently researched the birds and discovered they could fly as fast as 40 mph, Slawson said.

She said that one reason the bird may have flown into the window is that it’s mating season and the turkey might have seen its reflection and gone after it.

“I don’t know if that’s what happened, but that’s what some people have speculated,” she said.

The city’s street department crew helped board up the window, and a new one has been ordered. 

By Tuesday afternoon, the glass had been cleaned up and the only evidence of the crash was the boarded up window and the taped off shelf below it.

“Now we’re having fun with it,” Slawson said, noting the staff placed a turkey Beanie Baby on the table below the window to commemorate the incident.

This isn’t the first time the library has dealt with wayward wildlife. Carson said a number of years ago, a deer made its way inside, ran around and then took off.