For months, mail carriers in the Sacramento County enclave of Arden-Arcade have been terrorized by wild turkeys, at times disrupting deliveries.
This week, tensions between the fowl and one U.S. Postal Service worker reached a violent climax when the carrier killed a turkey while on duty, officials said, prompting an investigation by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
"On Monday, one of the mail carriers actually had some kind of a stick or something in his vehicle," said Capt. Patrick Foy, a spokesman for the department's Law Enforcement Division. "And when one of the particularly aggressive male turkeys attacked him, he smacked it and killed it."
