Tracey Tully

“But then they got very bold,” said Kliem, 81. “They would knock on the door — peck on it to get our attention.”

The turkeys amble in large groups across roads, stubbornly unaffected by a chorus of car horns. They perch on rooftops, make themselves at home in backyards and peck at their feathered reflections in shiny car bumpers. Some people have declared them a menace.

In recent days, the bold turkeys of Toms River are having a pre-Thanksgiving celebrity moment. While the threat they present is a source of spirited debate in this township of more than 95,000 residents, there is little doubt among neighbors that their numbers seem to have jumped this fall.

The wild turkeys have become so entrenched that they have even drawn the ire of a professional baseball player, Todd Frazier, who helped his hometown Toms River team win the 1998 Little League World Series.

“They have come close to harming my family and friends, ruined my cars, trashed my yard and much more,” Frazier, a former third baseman for the New York Yankees and New York Mets, wrote on Twitter. He emphasized his point with a photo of 10 turkeys standing on and near a black SUV.

A spokeswoman for Toms River said Frazier sent the same photo to township officials in March, when he first complained that the birds had overrun his neighborhood in the North Dover section of town. Frazier, who is now a free agent, could not be reached for comment.

The infiltration of wild turkeys into suburban neighborhoods is not unusual. In the fall, the birds are drawn to open, grassy fields near wooded areas that provide a ready supply of water, insects and acorns. Most nuisance turkey issues can be traced directly to residents providing food handouts to the animals or having well-stocked bird feeders, said Mitchell Blake, a biologist with the National Wild Turkey Federation.

“They multiply so much,” Frank Konopka, a nine-year resident of Holiday City, a residential community for people over 55, said as more than two dozen turkeys, most of them covered in dark brown feathers and standing more than 2 feet tall, meandered through his backyard.

“They peck your cars,’’ he said. “They go to your window, and they bother your animals.”

But the birds are quick to scatter whenever his dog approaches, and he said he had never seen them act aggressively toward people.

On a recent day, the two-legged visitors moved casually from yard to yard in the morning rain, nibbling as they went. Just before noon, the flock walked in an orderly line across a side street, forcing a truck and a car to stop and wait. (“They must know it’s Thanksgiving,” one amused driver shouted. “Watch out. They’re vicious. They’ll rip your head off,” another man joked through his car window, mocking the recent attention paid to the birds.)

“They don’t move, even if you beep your horn,” said Brenda Yard, whose home sits off a main road in Toms River. “They just stand there, like, ‘Oh yeah, this is my territory.’”

The media attention, fueled by Frazier’s request that the governor take action to address the birds, has made Holiday City the target of more than a few good-natured jokes.

“Friends from all over are calling me, saying, ‘I hear you have attack turkeys?’ It’s crazy,” said Amalia Pace, 67. She lived for 50 years in Brooklyn, New York, and said she enjoys the sight of wild turkeys — a bit of “country living.”

“They don’t bother anybody,” she added.

Wild turkeys that adapt to urban or suburban areas can become aggressive toward humans, especially during spring mating season, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But John Jenkins, a trustee with the Holiday City homeowners’ association, insists that reports of human-versus-turkey tension in Toms River have been vastly overblown. Yes, there are dozens of turkeys with a taste for wanderlust.

But he said they are neither aggressive nor terror-inducing.

“I had 45 turkeys on my front lawn,” Jenkins said. “I walked straight into them, and they tried to run away. Never once did they come after me or attack me.”

Statewide, there are an estimated 20,000 to 23,000 wild turkeys, and hunters kill about 3,000 birds each year, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

By the mid-1800s, turkeys had disappeared altogether from New Jersey. State biologists, with help from the National Wild Turkey Federation, reintroduced 22 wild turkeys in 1977, but it took 20 years for the population to grow to a size that hunting was viable in both spring and fall.

A spokeswoman for Toms River, Stacy Georgaklis, said it was illegal for animal control officers to interfere with a turkey unless it was sick or injured. The state Division of Fish and Wildlife on Wednesday began the process of luring the birds with corn and using a net to trap and relocate them.

Officials in New York City have repeatedly utilized a similar trap-and-release method in their effort to rid the grounds of Staten Island University Hospital of the hundreds of turkeys that roost there.

Several hundred were moved between 2015 and 2017, but the problem has persisted; a representative for the local councilman, Steven Matteo, said authorities were awaiting approvals from the state to trap hundreds of additional birds and bring them to an animal sanctuary in upstate New York.

“It is incumbent upon the state agencies that govern the treatment of wildlife to come up with a humane plan to either safely remove invasive animals or lessen their impact on communities, because this isn’t going to just go away,” Matteo said in a statement. “So, my advice to Todd Frazier: Be persistent.”

The turkeys of Toms River do have their defenders.

Vincent Landolfi Jr. said he became so agitated by what he said is a misrepresentation of the turkeys’ behavior that he pushed back online. “EVERYONE STOP BLOWING THIS OUT OF PROPORTION!” Landolfi, 61, wrote in a post on Tuesday morning. “No one that we know is terrified, let alone afraid.”

Still, Landolfi, a former teacher and coach at Red Bank Catholic High School, conceded that the turkeys do possess their fair share of Jersey attitude.

“They’re kind of like don’t-mess-with-me birds,” Landolfi said as several dozen turkeys spread out near his home.

But his grandchildren delight in them, and he considers them “part of the neighborhood charm.”

“It’s fall,” he said. “You see pumpkins. You see cornstalks. You see turkeys.”

This article originally appeared in

Plenty of Ruffled Feathers as Wild Turkeys Get Bold

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — There was a time when Don Kliem enjoyed feeding sunflower seeds and millet to the wild turkeys that wandered near his ranch-style house in this coastal town about 75 miles south of New York.

Still, wild turkeys that adapt to urban or suburban areas can become aggressive toward humans, especially during spring mating season, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A spokeswoman for Toms River, Stacy Georgaklis, said it was illegal for animal control officers to interfere with a turkey unless it was sick or injured. The township has contacted the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, which is working with the homeowners’ association in Holiday City on a solution that might include trapping the birds and relocating them, Georgaklis said.

That’s the process officials in New York City have repeatedly utilized in their effort to rid the grounds of Staten Island University Hospital of the hundreds of turkeys that roost there.

Several hundred were relocated between 2015 and 2017, but the problem has persisted; a representative for the local councilman, Steven Matteo, said they were awaiting approvals from the state to trap hundreds of additional birds and bring them to an animal sanctuary in upstate New York.

Still, the turkeys of Toms River do have their defenders.

New Pecking Order: Wild Turkeys Take Over a Town Before You-Know-When

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — There was a time when Don Kliem enjoyed feeding sunflower seeds and millet to the wild turkeys that wandered near his ranch-style house in Toms River, New Jersey, a coastal town about 75 miles south of New York.

It passed by a lopsided 2-to-1 margin.

Nearly 200 miles away, along the state’s southern swath, a directive by the state attorney general that in part bars county sheriff officers from doing the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has led two counties to file federal lawsuits. A third county has threatened legal action.

The state attorney general’s rule not only precipitated the lawsuits, but also became a key election issue, generating support for Republican candidates who successfully ousted incumbent Democrats in a conservative district that cuts across Cape May, Cumberland and Atlantic counties.

Under President Donald Trump, immigration has become one of the most polarizing issues in America. He has made immigration a central theme, repeatedly calling for a wall along the Mexican border and making incendiary comments about immigrants in the country illegally.

California has made opposition to Trump’s stringent immigration policies a core priority, while prosecutors in New York and Massachusetts have sued to block ICE arrests in courthouses.

But in reliably blue New Jersey, where the governor was elected on a promise to usher in a liberal agenda, there remain pockets of defiance to progressive immigration policy and what critics have labeled the “sanctuary state scam.”

“It was a rallying cry,” said Antwan McClellan, a Republican elected Tuesday to the General Assembly who works as the personnel director and assistant to the Cape May County sheriff. “People were concerned about their safety.” The sheriff filed one of the lawsuits against the attorney general.

He is being represented in the suit by another victorious Republican, Michael Testa Jr., a chairman of Trump’s reelection effort in New Jersey, who won a state Senate seat that had been held by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, one of only two House Democrats to oppose a resolution laying out rules for an impeachment inquiry.

Immigration will likely be one issue Republicans will push next year as they seek to reclaim House seats in Republican-leaning New Jersey districts where Democrats won last year.

The state’s Democratic attorney general, Gurbir S. Grewal, first issued the Immigrant Trust Directive a year ago, but it did not take hold until March.

It laid out rules that blocked local and state law enforcement officers from asking people about their immigration status, or from helping federal immigration agents as they make detention arrests. It allows law enforcement officers to turn over immigrants in the country illegally and charged with certain crimes to ICE agents, but only if those agents pick up the migrants on the day of their release.

The aim of the directive was to eliminate the fear of coming forward for people who are not in the country legally and may be victims of crimes, or witnesses who could be helpful to law enforcement authorities.

It came in response to the “overzealous enforcement environment that was driving people into the shadows,” Grewal said.

In Sussex County, the referendum was placed on the ballot by the county freeholders, at the request of the sheriff, who was reelected Tuesday. The state’s Republican chairman, Doug Steinhardt, helped to draft the wording that asked whether voters were in favor of county government providing support to ICE agents.

“It’s about putting public safety above politics,” said the Sussex County sheriff, Michael F. Strada. “The attorney general and the governor are endangering our communities.”

But not all law enforcement officers agree.

Ahmed Naga, the police chief in Long Hill, said most nonelected law enforcement officials support the attorney general’s directive and consider it important for effective crime fighting.

“We want victims to be able to come to the police,” Naga said. “None of us signed up to enforce immigration laws.”

The referendum, which is nonbinding, won overwhelming support in Sussex County, a rural corner of rolling hills and farmland that is 87% white.

Residents who said they were in favor of the ballot item spoke of the importance of cooperating with federal agents, and the need for immigrants to find a legal path to citizenship.

John Alvarez, 57, a retired police officer who lives in the Sussex County town of Newton, said he arrived in the United States from Colombia as an 11-year-old. He said he voted in favor of the referendum because he does not want New Jersey to become a “safe house” for immigrants in the country illegally.

“We did it the right way,” Alvarez said of his family. “They want the easy way out.”

Adda Delgado, a 42-year-old cabdriver who lives in Newton but is originally from Ecuador, said she regularly gives rides to immigrants in the country illegally. “They are afraid,” she said.

Across a picturesque town square that appears lifted from a Norman Rockwell painting, campaign signs remained planted in a traffic median a day after the election. “Stop the sanctuary scam,” several read.

“I think it’s more wanting to give the federal government the authority,” said a woman who identified herself as K. Talen. She was pushing her two young sons in a stroller and said she voted for the referendum. “I don’t think people are afraid of our neighbors.”

But some residents saw a measure of hypocrisy among those who supported the referendum.

“It’s not like people aren’t hiring undocumented workers,” said Joanne Horr, a 23-year-old resident of Sussex County who said she opposed the ballot question. “They want to support ICE to come in to arrest people who are trying to build your house? Not for me.”

The ballot question, and the lawsuits filed by Ocean and Cape May counties that are wending their way through the federal courts, have the power to sway public opinion, Grewal said. “They’re feeding into this false narrative that immigrant populations commit crime at higher rates,” he said.

John J. Farmer Jr., the director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, said the areas of resistance to the attorney general’s directive “speaks to the fact that New Jersey is in some sense a divided state.”

“You have pockets of very Republican areas,” he said, “that are sympathetic to the president’s agenda.”

In Sussex County, 62% of voters supported Trump for president over Hillary Clinton in a state that as a whole backed Clinton by 14 percentage points.

Still, it remains unclear how issues like immigration will impact Democratic House members running for reelection next year in districts where, for now, it remains a powerful talking point, he said.

“I don’t think that there is going to be any clear-cut drift back to Trump, because I see other issues that are countervailing,” Farmer said.

Kathy O’Leary, the New Jersey coordinator for Pax Christi, a Roman Catholic peace movement, said she believes there are similarities between the ballot referendum, and the willingness of some Democrat-led counties, like Essex, to accept federal funds to house detained immigrants.

In Essex, some officials argue that the funds help provide vital services to their constituents, including immigrants.

“They all function as a way for the party in power to stay in power,” she said.

Grewal called the legal and ballot efforts “political theater.” “We are in no way a sanctuary state,” he said.

In Blue New Jersey, a Conservative Backlash on Immigration

A referendum on Tuesday’s ballot in New Jersey’s northernmost county asked whether voters wanted local officials to cooperate with federal immigration agents.

It clipped trees and the roof of a house in northern New Jersey as it lost control on a morning damp with drizzle and cloaked in fog.

Neighbors in the suburb of Colonia described a deafening sound as the plane, a twin-engine Cessna 414, crashed through the roof of a second home, plummeting two floors into the basement.

The inferno that followed engulfed the home and spread quickly to two adjacent houses, drawing emergency responders from eight nearby towns to the tree-lined street.

Despite the severity of the crash and the fast-moving blaze, no one on the ground was injured.

“It’s miraculous,” said John E. McCormac, mayor of the township of Woodbridge, which includes Colonia.

The pilot, identified as Dr. Michael Schloss by his wife and by the director of the New Jersey airport where the plane had been headed, did not survive the crash. The pilot was the only person aboard the plane, according to a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.

“This man was a true Renaissance man — a fine gentleman,” said the director, Paul Dudley, who added that Schloss regularly flew into Linden Airport, which is about 25 miles southwest of midtown Manhattan.

“It’s a loss to the medical community, and it’s a loss to the aviation community,” Dudley added.

The pilot’s wife, Julie Seraphin Schloss, said he had been headed to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital for a Grand Rounds lecture Wednesday. Michael Schloss, 74, had worked for years as a professor and cardiologist at a hospital associated with New York University, his wife said.

“He was a fantastic cardiologist,” Seraphin Schloss said.

Dudley said Linden Airport got a call from the air tower at Newark Liberty International Airport trying to verify that the plane, which had originated in Leesburg, Virginia, had landed. An official with the Federal Aviation Administration called a second time, and provided the plane’s tail number, Dudley said.

The last two letters of the plane’s identification stood for the couple’s first names — M and J, Dudley said.

He said Schloss was a trained instrument pilot who had decades of experience flying complex airplanes, including a fighter jet.

“I can’t help but think something else must have gone wrong that overwhelmed him,” said Dudley, who described the weather conditions as “horrible.”

Officials with the FAA and the NTSB were headed to New Jersey to determine what might have caused the plane to crash.

McCormac said a neighbor described seeing the plane flying lower than normal just before hearing the crash.

The couple who lived in the home that was struck were at work, and their child was at school, he said. A woman who lives in one of the neighboring houses on Berkley Avenue heard the noise and fled before the fire reached her home, McCormac said.

“The house was completely engulfed,” he said. “Thank God no one was home.”

The Cessna went down in a quiet residential neighborhood, not far from an elementary school. The school was not evacuated, but students were dismissed just after 1 p.m. because power was temporarily cut off in the area, the district superintendent said.

Hours after the crash, neighbors were still standing on front lawns and under tents that were set up by emergency workers.

“The house is half-missing, and it’s all black,” said David Kaca, 19, who returned home from class at Seton Hall University to find the neighborhood filled with smoke.

Schloss had been a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association since 1979, according to Dick Knapinski, a spokesman for the association. Schloss served for six years as the president of its Warbirds of America division, which is dedicated to the preservation of vintage military aircraft.

“We are truly mystified as to how this could have happened,” Dudley said.

Cardiologist Dies After Cessna Plane Hits New Jersey Home

A small plane piloted by a prominent cardiologist heading toward New York City for a lecture was spotted flying unusually low just before 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Fog and light drizzle blanketed the township of Woodbridge as the plane plummeted, clipping the tops of trees and the roof of one home before slamming into another, Mayor John E. McCormac said.

The plane pierced the roof of the second home before coming to rest in the basement, igniting a fire that quickly engulfed the two-story structure and spread to two adjacent homes, McCormac said.

The pilot, the sole occupant of the plane, was killed in the crash, according to a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.

“It had to come in straight down,” McCormac said. “It’s miraculous that nobody was hurt on the ground.”

The mayor said a neighbor described seeing the plane flying lower than normal just before hearing a deafening crash.

The plane, which originated in Leesburg, Virginia, had been headed for Linden Airport, a municipal airport about 25 miles southwest of midtown Manhattan, McCormac said.

The couple who lived in the home were at work, and their child was at school, McCormac said. The woman who lives in a neighboring house on Berkley Avenue in Colonia, which is part of Woodbridge, heard the noise and fled before the fire reached her home, he added.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators were headed to the site to investigate what caused the plane, a Cessna 414, to crash.

Officials at Linden Airport, which is about 5 miles northeast of Colonia, said they had no additional information about the plane or the crash.

The Cessna went down in a quiet residential neighborhood, not far from an elementary school. The school was not evacuated, but students were dismissed just after 1 p.m. because power was temporarily cut off in the area, officials said.

Pilot Is Killed After Cessna Plane Hits New Jersey Home

A small plane had been spotted flying low Tuesday morning just before it fell from the sky and through the roof of a suburban New Jersey home, officials said.

The Cessna 414 crashed into the home in Colonia around 11 a.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Two homes were on fire, and all available fire units were at the scene of the crash, according to the Colonia Fire Department.

A local official said that no one on the ground was injured and that only a pilot had been aboard the plane.

Mayor John McCormac of Woodbridge Township, which includes Colonia, said near the scene of the crash, on Berkley Avenue, that the plane came from Virginia and had been heading to Linden, New Jersey.

Officials at Linden Airport, a small municipal airport about 5 miles from Colonia, said they had no additional information about the plane or the crash.

The plane went down in a quiet residential neighborhood, not far from an elementary school.

The FAA said investigators were headed to the scene of the crash.

Cessna Plane Crashes Into Home in New Jersey, Igniting Fire

A small plane crashed Tuesday morning into a house in a suburban New Jersey town and burst into flames, federal officials said.

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