Bodycam footage shows police officers in Wausau, Wisconsin, responding to a wild break-in at an apartment complex on Friday.
Doris Madden, a resident at City Walk Apartments in Wausau, became suspicious after she noticed a broken window. She alerted management that someone appeared to have smashed through a second-story window and broken into an apartment.
“We had no idea what had caused it, or if anybody was even home,” Madden told WSAW-TV.
The apartment manager sent maintenance to investigate, and they found the suspect inside the apartment.
It was a wild turkey.
“When he opened the door, there’s the turkey. And so he thought, ‘I’m not going to try to catch that thing.’ So he called the police station for animal control,” Madden said.
Officers from the Wausau Police Department were called to remove the fowl invader.
“We have one humane officer, so a lot of times the first response in any call including animal calls are our patrol officers. They just have to try to do the best they can with the information that they have and the equipment available to them,” Wausau Police Department Patrol Captain Todd Baeten said.
Bodycam footage released by the department shows officers equipped with gloves and a net preparing to capture the turkey.
“I want the gloves and the net, though, is what I’m saying, because when I go in there I want to be able to, like, get it,” one officer tells his partner.
“It’s a turkey, not a tiger!” the other scoffs.
“Yeah, it’s gonna scratch!” His partner replies. “Have you hunted turkey before?”
The video shows the officers enter the apartment, where the turkey was gobbling around like it owned the place.
“All right, should we just go in at it?” the officer with the camera asks. They attempted to apprehend the bird, which resisted arrest and dodged the officer’s net several times before it was cornered.
The officers were able to release the turkey outside unharmed.
“It’s a Turkey, Not a Tiger!” | BTS Body Cam
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Baeten said he was proud of how his officers handled the situation and how they captured the turkey without harming it.
“It really underscores the unpredictable nature of the job that our officers are asked to do at any given time,” Baeten said
This was not the department’s first encounter with wildlife.
Last year, officers were called to wrangle a deer that managed to crash through a window at a local nursing home.