A small Illinois kitten has eight lives left after getting itself stuck in a van’s engine.

Mechanics working at a Midas muffler shop in Tinsley Park found the kitten wedged beside the van’s radiator after hearing several strange noises.

At first they thought the meowing was from a pet store commercial that was playing on the store’s radio…but it continued after the commercial ended.

“I walked in and the radio was real loud and there was a PetSmart commercial on…and so I thought it was just the commercial you know. And soon as the commercial stopped the cat stopped,” said mechanic Scott Bella.

They say that it’s amazing the kitten came away unharmed after spending so long next to a hot engine on what was already one of the hottest days of the year.

Bella says the kitten, now appropriately named “Lucky”, will stay with him.

Researchers at the Methodist Neurological Institute (NI) in Houston and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City used functional MRI to determine that songbirds have a pronounced right-brain response to the sound of songs, establishing a foundational study for future research on songbird models of speech disorders such as stuttering, as reported today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A.

This is the first functional MRI study to determine how vocal sounds are represented within the brain of an awake zebra finch, a well-studied animal model of vocal learning. Because of many similarities between birdsong and human speech, this research could lead to a better understanding of the cause of stuttering and other speech problems.

By using specifically-tailored high-resolution fMRI in awake, mildly sedated zebra finches, scientists were able to look at the activity in the entire avian brain during song stimulation.

“While we found that both sides of the brain were activated by sounds in the songbirds, our research showed that the right side of their brains discriminated sounds better,” said Santosh A. Helekar, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the paper. Helekar is associate research professor of neuroscience at the Methodist NI and Weill Cornell. “If we can link what we find in birds to what we already know about human brains, then we could better understand the causes of speech disorders and, in the long-run, be able to provide treatments to patients.”

Helekar has long collaborated with Dr. David Rosenfield, director of the speech and language center at the Methodist NI and a nationally-renowned language expert, to study stuttering and other speech disorders.

Using the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI method, researchers observed brain response patterns in 16 adult zebra finches during playback of the birds’ own song, their tutor’s song, an unfamiliar zebra finch’s song, and a synthetic sound of a single frequency. The songbirds’ own song caused a stronger response in the auditory areas of the brain. The overall findings suggest that vocal sounds may be better represented on the right side of the brain in these songbirds.

“We don’t know exactly what goes wrong with the human brain when a patient stutters or has a particular speech problem. But, if we can understand the neurobiology of the brain of this animal model and how sounds are processed by birds that produce normal and variant songs, then we may be able to translate these findings into treatments for patients with disorders such as stuttering and verbal dyspraxia,” said Henning U. Voss, Ph.D., first author on the PNAS paper and assistant professor of physics in radiology at Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center of Weill Cornell Medical College.

The vocal learning process in the zebra finch offers a model system to study the neural and behavioral mechanisms by which humans learn to produce sounds. Songbirds such as zebra finches have specialized areas of their brains devoted to communication. That is why they have been used as animal models to study speech disorders, such as stuttering. It is estimated that more than 3 million Americans stutter.

This paper appears in the PNAS Online Edition and will be published in the June 19 print issue. The research presented was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and Weill Cornell Medical College, and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Research Center Matheon.

UNALASKA, Alaska – A bald eagle perches atop a pole near the road. Standing 50 feet away, I slowly aim my camera and fire. The bird barely budges.

Creeping two steps forward, I shoot a second frame. The bird doesn’t move.

I edge forward, approaching and firing in two-step increments. Finally, about 15 feet away, my feathered model has had enough. It flaps its wings and flies off.

Normally, I feel lucky to see one of these beauties at binocular distance. Here, I was nearly eye to eye with our national emblem.

Eagle encounters such as this are common near Dutch Harbor on the Alaskan island of Unalaska. It’s from this fish-rich Aleutian port that men from the Discovery Channel’s popular Deadliest Catch reality show set sail for the Bering Sea.

In 1942, in what has been termed the Forgotten War, Japanese bombers unleashed a two-day attack on the island. Today, eagles soar over abandoned fortifications from that confrontation. The combination of balds and bunkers serves as a graphic reminder of freedom’s price.

The best time to see eagles is May through July, when the parents nest and raise young. They glide through the air, alight on beaches and perch pigeonlike on rooftops. Eagles are everywhere.

One drizzly day, I tour a fish-packing plant. Someone has left refuse bins uncovered on the dock, and waiting there for a Dumpster dive is a rain-drenched eagle.

I stand on the opposite side of the container, six feet away, looking into its golden eyes. It’s a new personal record for closeness to America’s bird.

When Dave Gordon’s dog started barking at 3 p.m. last Friday Gordon thought it was the usual bunny hopping across his lawn.

But when his 15-year-old son, Rion looked out of the window of his home on East Shawnigan Lake Rd., he saw something not so warm and fuzzy.

A healthy-looking six-foot long cougar was staring back at him.

“He just stood there in the driveway looking up at us for about minute and we’re looking back at him with our mouths open. I finally ran up and got camera just as he was starting to leave,” Gordon said. “I think the cat was more interested in the dog barking. I think that was what held his interest.”

The cougar then walked across the driveway into the bush and they lost site of them.

As Gordon’s one-acre property is at the bottom of Mount Baldy, he thinks the cat walked down from the mountain.

He’s been hiking in the bush for 25 years and he’s never seen a sign of a cougar.

“It’s pretty funny to see one in my own yard.”

His son, Rion, was also surprised and more than a little concerned.

“That’s usually the time he comes home from school,” Gordon said. “That would be something if (the cougar) was waiting for him up the driveway.”

The first thing they did after the cat left was to let neighbours know.

Conservation officer Patrick McHarg said it’s not uncommon to see cougars around a major deer population, like on Vancouver Island, because deer is their number one food.

“If you see a cougar that happens to be crossing your property and it looks like it’s entering one part and walking through and going out the other, consider yourself very lucky,” he said. “It’s very, very seldom, even for people who spend time in the wild, to get the opportunity to see a cougar.”

McHarg cautions if you live in a built-up area or an area that has small children, then it’s best to get in touch with the call centre at 1 877 952-7277 to let them know.

The phone is staffed 24 hours.

McHarg said if you see a cougar west of Shawnigan Lake while on Renfrew Road it’s not unusual, but if you see one in downtown in Mill Bay by Tim Horton’s, then it needs to be reported.

“Cougars are an elusive animal,” he said. “They stalk their prey and take a long time to decide whether the figure they’re stalking will cause them more harm than benefit as a food source.”

For normal adult-sized people, the chance of being harassed by a cougar is slight.

“They don’t look at us as humans, they looking at us as a food source, that’s why very small children are susceptible to cougars,” McHarg said. Small pets are in also in danger because of their size.

His advice if you see a cougar is to stand tall, throw rocks and yell, and if you have a pack, swing away; anything to show aggression. The cougar will reassess the situation and back off.

For Dave Gordon, he doesn’t see the cougar as a threat, though sighting it was unnerving.

After the cougar left Gordon checked the ground on his property but there was no sign of paw prints anywhere.

“It was pretty funny, when he walked into the bush about 10 seconds later, a little brown rabbit came roaring out and took off in the other direction.”

Here are 10 reasons your own backyard may be the best place for bird-watching — especially during the summer.

1. You don’t have to endure oppressive heat or pesky mosquitoes. Backyard bird-watching is a pain-free way to enjoy the sight of a bird like a blue jay standing regal on a fence or indecorously dunking its body in the cool water of a birdbath.

2. You don’t have to travel. No hassles of packing suitcases, lugging equipment through airports or loading your car for a day trip. No gasoline expenses, either. Just the cost of a pot of coffee and a window view of a mourning dove feeding quietly on the ground.

3. Your backyard birds are as beautiful in their own right as any birds you’d see anywhere in the world. I know, because I’ve traveled to exotic places to see incredible birds, and I can think of no better sight than the spectacular crimson plumes of a male Northern cardinal in my backyard.

4. All your bird-watching equipment is handy. You don’t have to worry about whether you have your binoculars or your camera. Everything is at your fingertips.

5. Watching backyard birds improves your skill at bird identification. When I was a young whippersnapper, a professional bird tour guide told me that the best way to learn bird identification was to study birds in my backyard. I still practice that rule.

6. You can enjoy the parenting behavior of birds like chickadees as they coax their young to fly to your bird feeders.

7. You can watch the comings and goings of birds in your yard throughout the seasons. During fall and spring, look for migratory songbirds like warblers and tanagers. Note the arrival of winter residents like yellow-rumped warblers, ruby-crowned kinglets and orange-crowned warblers.

8. You can teach your children or grandchildren the fun of observing birds without dragging them kicking and screaming away from their computer games to a wildlife refuge. And when they discover the wonders of wild birds, maybe they’ll drag you to a wildlife refuge.

9. You don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn as many bird-watchers do to get to a bird-watching spot. Birds will hang around your yard all day. Enjoy them at your leisure.

10. You can watch birds while carrying out other activities like housecleaning, installing a new kitchen sink or just looking up while reading a book. Of course, if you start watching the antics of birds like Carolina wrens flitting around your flower pots, you may not finish cleaning the house, installing a sink or reading more than 20 pages of a book.

A CURIOUS kitten was rescued by firefighters after it climbed intoatoilet and got stuck after squeezing through the U-bend.

Its owners are thought to have heard a splash and a cry and raced into the bathroom of their home in Cotham, Bristol, to look for theireight-week-old pet.

They soon realised their daredevil cat had not only jumped into the toilet bowl but had then tried to see what lurked beyond the U-bend.

The cat got stuck soon after negotiating the obstacle and called for help.

The adventure was not quite over though, as its worried owners failed to dislodge the trapped kitten and ended up ringing 999.

A fire crew arrived a short time later and removed the toilet and freed the cat, which was uninjured despite being a little wet.

An Avon fire and rescue spokeswoman said: “Wereceived a call at 11.18pm last night that an eight-week old kitten had got trapped insidea toilet.

“It had got past the U-bend and its owners couldn’t get it out. Firefighters removed the toilet and handed the cat back to its gratefulowners. You could say the cat’s used up one of its nine lives now.”

After 10 months the East family had given up all hope they would ever see their missing cat Lewis again.

So they were shocked and thrilled when the seven-year-old black moggy returned suddenly to their Old Catton home.

Marie East, 28, mum of Ben, three, and Owen, 18 months, said: “Lewis had disappeared on a rainy night in August.

“He went out in the middle of the night and never came back.

“We thought he had been stolen, because there were a lot of thefts of cats in the area at that time. If he was stolen, maybe he managed to get away and then find his way back home?

“Ben’s especially thrilled that Lewis has come back. He keeps asking him where he’s been, expecting an answer.”

When the puss first went missing, Mrs East and husband Steve, 32, an insulation technician, searched long and hard in the area around their White Woman Lane home to find him. They put up posters in public places and asked family, friends and neighbours about any possible sighting, but all to no avail. Until now.

Mrs East added: “We’re all just so delighted to have him back - everybody’s happy. But I don’t think we will ever know where he went for those 10 months.”

Amazingly, another lost cat turned up last week after going missing from a Norfolk cattery 10 months earlier.

Peter and Gillian Watson feared the worst after their cat Leon went missing while they were on holiday last August.

But now the family, from Roydon, near Diss, has received a call from Linden House Veterinary Centre in Diss to say Leon is safe.

As Marty Harris walked into the South End building where she keeps her car, her dog, Adele, began to act funny. She sniffed and nuzzled Harris’s knees, then sat down and refused to budge. That was Harris’s alert that she was in danger of fainting. So Harris kept her end of the bargain: She sat down and waited.

It happened several times, Harris following Adele’s signals to stop and sit. A walk to the security desk that would take most people 30 seconds took Harris 30 minutes. At one point, Adele jumped up and placed her paws on Harris’s chest, the dire warning that means “lie down immediately.” While people in business attire rushed by, Harris lay on the marble floor. Adele promptly lay across her.

“I was there for two hours before she’d let me up,” says Harris, 36. “She was staring at me like, ‘You better not move.’ It’s really embarrassing, but it’s better than fainting in front of everyone and being rolled out in an ambulance.”

Harris suffers from a chronic fainting disorder caused by an irregular heartbeat. Adele, a black Labrador retriever, is her heart service dog, trained to alert its owner about an impending problem. The agency that placed Adele with Harris has placed only one other heart alert dog, and the director says she knows of no others in the country.

Though dogs have long been trained to help disabled people, Harris called dozens of agencies before she found one that had placed a dog with a heart patient. Canine Partners for Life in Pennsylvania met with Harris and her family and spoke with her doctor before deciding to offer her a dog. The nonprofit agency spends $22,000 to obtain, train, and board each dog. It takes two years to socialize and train them to follow commands such as fetching cellphones and wallets, opening doors, pulling cargo, and helping with other tasks. Then, the recipients spend three weeks on campus working with their dog and trainers. The agency asks for a donation — Harris paid $900 — to help offset the costs.

In a role reversal, it is the heart dog who tells the human what to do: stop, sit, lie down. Adele acts as Harris’s early-warning system, perhaps by scent or sound. She knows — before Harris does — when Harris is about to faint. Adele’s job is to alert her to sit or lie down. The dog will give a signal — nudging Harris, halting, sitting — that tells Harris she needs to rest. When Adele senses the danger of fainting has passed, she lets Harris resume her activities.

“My dog,” says Harris, “is the boss of me.” Since she got Adele, she has not fainted once.

At last, a diagnosis

Until a year, ago, Harris was a chronic fainter. As a child, she would faint in school and on playing fields. Medical tests revealed nothing wrong and preventive heart medications did not help. A psychiatrist told her it was all in her head.

“I felt useless for a long time,” says Harris, an artist who paints in the loft apartment she shares with her husband and son. “I was scared to go anywhere alone.”

During her wedding, she had to stop halfway down the aisle, eliciting gasps from family and friends. “Half thought I was going to faint, and the other half thought I was going to run,” says Harris, laughing. Her worst moment came when she fainted in front of her 4-year-old son and his preschool class. She awoke in an ambulance.

“I saw what I was doing to my son, and I had no control over it,” Harris says.

Her condition worsened. She was fainting weekly, then daily, and suffering concussions. Her husband, Jeff, who teaches at Lexington High School, would have to leave his job to pick her up at the hospital. “It was nerve- racking,” he says. Both he and their son , Ethan, now 8, were afraid to leave her home alone.

Harris was finally referred to Dr. James Januzzi, director of the cardiac intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, who diagnosed her with severe neurocardiogenic syncope. Harris, he says, has one of the most extreme cases he has seen. “She was often fainting in public, getting admitted to the hospital frequently, and was fainting almost daily,” he says.

Januzzi had exhausted all medical options. Blood pressure medications, plasma expanders, beta - blockers — nothing helped her condition.

One night, Harris saw a television program about golden retrievers that could detect cancer in people before an actual diagnosis. It got her thinking: Could a dog help her?

Mysteries of dogs

Through research, she found dogs for all sorts of ailments but not for heart issues. She finally tracked down Canine Partners for Life, which had offered a service dog to one other heart patient. The agency provides dogs for people with disabilities such as muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and seizure disorders. Harris was on a waiting list for several months. And then she went to Pennsylvania for what she calls “doggy boot camp,” training with Adele and staff members eight hours a day for three weeks.

No one really knows how dogs such as Adele do it. The theories are that the dog picks up a change in scent or behavior. “We believe there are chemical changes going on in a person’s body” before an episode , says Darlene Sullivan, founder and executive director of Canine Partners for Life . “We don’t have any scientific proof. It’s just a natural instinct. It’s one of the mysteries of dogs.”

Hard as it is to believe, Harris’s doctor thinks the key might be the dog’s hearing. “Since it is well recognized that the usual trigger for neurocardiogenic syncope is a fast heartbeat, it is likely that the dog is sensing Marty’s tachycardia and warning her,” Januzzi says. “Having said that, I have no idea how [Adele] is doing it, but the results speak for themselves. Marty’s quality of life is better, she’s more confident, and all in all I think it’s darn near miraculous.”

Harris believes it is a combination of scent and hearing, but she does not really know how Adele does what she does: “Sometimes you don’t question the gift; you just accept it.”

At the owner-dog training in Pennsylvania, it is on-the-job learning for both human and canine. While in session, many owners have seizures or, in Harris’s case, faint. The dog, through positive reinforcement, bonds so closely with its owner that it learns how to recognize symptoms and is taught various signals to alert its owner: licking, nuzzling, sitting, or lying down.

“It’s like having a permanent dance partner,” Harris says. “At first, we would trip all over each other, but now we have our dance moves mastered.” Adele alerts her as many as 20 times a day, and has taught Harris to slow down and relax. She is even trained to lift a prone Harris’s legs up with her muzzle so that the blood gets to her heart faster. She can pull Harris up stairs and help steady her going down. If Harris does faint, Adele is trained to retrieve her cellphone for the 911 call.

Worker and companion

A leather dog lead hooks on to Harris’s belt, and Adele wears saddlebags across her back to carry all sorts of things, including Harris’s cellphone, wallet — and dog treats. Harris makes it clear that Adele is not a pet, “though I love her.” She is a working dog and is not supposed to be distracted. Even Jeff and Ethan are not allowed to play with her.

Adele goes everywhere Marty goes: Fenway Park, restaurants, stores, the T. They took her to a wedding last summer, where she “danced” at the reception between Jeff and Marty.

If Harris feels faint in a store, Adele helps her pay, placing a credit card, which she holds in her teeth, on the counter for the startled clerk. She picks laundry off the floor, piece by piece, and carries it to Harris, who throws it in the machine. When the load is dry, she pulls it out of the machine and takes it back to Harris. “She doesn’t fold,” Harris says, laughing. But she does drag the full basket from laundry room to bedroom. All of this prevents Harris from stooping or bending, which can cause her to faint.

In the middle of the night, Adele accompanies Harris to the bathroom and back to bed, staring at her intently for several minutes before finally settling into sleep herself.

On a recent day, Harris had just left her apartment when Adele began to nuzzle at her knees. She found a bench and sat. This start-and-stop went on for nearly an hour, until Harris finally reached her garage. She is a lot slower than she used to be. But she’s not complaining. “Adele,” she says, “gave me my life back.”

For more than a decade, the dark depths of the Knysna forest have been a lonely outpost for the last survivor of South Africa’s once great forest elephant herds.

The eventual death of this elephant, an elderly female called the Matriarch, would mean the country’s last free-roaming elephant would finally join the Knysna buffalo, which once also roamed this forest, on the extinction list.

Or so it was thought - until now.

Recent groundbreaking research, using elephant dung, has revealed that five previously unknown female elephants, possibly the Matriarch’s offspring, are living in the expanse of the lush forest nestled in the Southern Cape.

“Things were so bleak and dismal in the past,” says Gareth Patterson, who, together with US conservation geneticist Lori Eggert, made the discovery, details of which were published recently in the prestigious African Journal of Ecology.

“For years there was just one old female out there,” says Patterson. “That was going to be the end of the Knysna elephants. Shoo, it was too enormously sad. We thought: what have we done [as human beings]? Now there’s real optimism and hope.”

Patterson’s earlier work with lions and with George Adamson of Born Free fame earned him the title of “Father of the Lions” in Botswana. But although the plight of the African lion was his focus, “elephants were always in the background”, he says.

He moved to the outskirts of the Knysna forest seven years ago, determined to learn more about the elusive elephants that lumber like ghosts in the forest.

The San - the first chroniclers of the elephants - depicted them in their rock art, and thought of them as a source of power for shamans. Much later, generations of South Africans were enchanted by their battle with humans for survival in Dalene Matthee’s Circles in a Forest.

It has been estimated that there would have been as many as 100 000 of the creatures today - were it not for the onslaught of ivory hunters during 1790 and 1890, who decimated them in their thousands. By 1994 it was widely believed that only the Matriarch remained.

“When I came here I looked at the size of the forest, which is a vast, unfenced area. I thought to myself: ‘How is it known that there’s only one elephant left in this massive area?’

“The popular perception still exists that they are restricted to the forest - I saw evidence pretty early on that there was more than one elephant. I was finding young adult elephants by their tracks and, on top of that, evidence of elephants beyond the forest and in the mountain fynbos.”

This, he says, shows how incredibly adaptable elephants are in a range of habitats, which is “amazing, considering their size and diet”.

Patterson has traversed thousands of kilometres of the forest, fynbos mountainsides and forestry plantations on foot, interpreting spoor and elephant dung of the world’s southernmost elephants.

“The area is large and the elephants are few. Tracking in these conditions is very difficult. In the forest and even in other areas where the elephants roam, visibility is limited,” he says.

“If an elephant freezes up and stands completely still, it becomes almost invisible, particularly in the dense forest areas.”

Patterson was inspired by the “exciting” work of Eggert, of the University of Missouri-Columbia, with forest elephant populations in West Africa. Eggert had developed a genetic census technique for forest elephants, using DNA extracted from dung samples as a way to manage dangerous and secretive species.

The fibrous vegetation that elephants eat continuously scrapes cells from the intestine, which makes dung a reliable source of DNA. This “genotyping” can reveal the numbers of individuals and sexes, how the animals are related and the level of genetic diversity.

“Lori’s method was well suited to the conditions here,” says Patterson. “It was not disruptive or stressful, as sightings of the elephants were not required.”

Patterson spent nearly a year gathering elephant dung, sending it to Eggert in the US for DNA analysis. Her results were astonishing.

Eggert explains: “The results show there are five different genotypes, or individuals, present in the samples. It also showed that they were all females.

“By looking at the genetic similarity of the genotypes, it revealed that the females were likely to be related. The possible presence of a male is intriguing, but we didn’t detect him. I’d really like to believe that a bull is present, and I believe more study will be needed,” says Eggert.

Patterson is thrilled. “It’s a reason for cautious hope. Theirs [the elephants’] is a most remarkable story of survival against formidable odds.”

But the research on the newfound elephants is seemingly at odds with the findings of SA National Parks, which manages the Knysna forest and says its evidence - based on photographs and sightings - point to only one female elephant, the Matriarch.

“But we do not exclude the possibility that there might be more in the area,” says spokesperson Wanda Mkutshulwa. “All the photographic records we have collected over a number of years seem to derive from only one elephant. The last recent sighting by [elephant researcher] Hylton Herd is considered to be the same animal we usually encounter.”

Herd, who works in the forest, says: “We’re not against Gareth. We know they’ve done their research. But it’s hard for us who are in the forest every day to believe this.

“Five elephants would leave lots of dung and cause lots of havoc, and we’re just not seeing that. Either they’re elephantoms or spook elephants,” he laughs. “But these findings encourage us even more to get out and see the truth … We never realised how accurate dung analysis could be.”

Patterson has encountered the elephants up close, but says it was never his quest to have a sighting.

“A sighting is so limited in what it can tell you. It is no good unless you get a photo, and a photo is no good unless it can tell you something. Photography is not an exact science - the same individual [elephant] can look different. There’s also the danger and disruptive factor,” he says.

“These findings will come as a big shock to some who thought they were doomed. But I think the public is over the moon,” says Patterson, who adds there could be more elephants in the wild.

But there is a concern about their genetic longevity. “The size of this population has been small for a long time - breeding between related individuals reduces the genetic variability of the population and increases the chances that harmful recessive genes will be expressed.

“It reduces the probability that individuals will have the genes needed to adapt to changes in the environment, such as new parasites and diseases, or even changes in climate or available food plants,” says Eggert.

One way to alleviate genetic stasis - and protect the elephants, who now have a range of private, commercial and state land - is through the creation of protected wildlife corridors.

“We need to identify the corridors they are using now,” says Patterson. “Protecting these corridors protects not only the elephants but a myriad other species, and the habitat they all depend on.

“There’s no long-term future for them unless there’s a certain amount of free movement. But obviously it can never be like it was in the past.”

He salutes initiatives that open up wildlife corridors, like the Eden to Addo Corridor Initiative, which aims to create a “living corridor” between the Eden district and the Greater Addo Elephant Park.

Founder Joan Berning says landowners adjoining the Garden of Eden, earmarked to be part of the corridor, seem to be happy that elephants will “march over their land”.

“This will allow a greater range for the five or more Knysna elephants,” she says.

But the future is uncertain for the legendary elephants. “Despite our discovery, there’s no getting away from the fact they’re fragile and endangered,” says Patterson. There are so few in the bigger picture.

“These are iconic elephants. They’re such a potent symbol in our country and mean so many things to different sectors of our population. They’re a romantic link to the past! These are elephants that have somehow come back from the brink. We’ve got to think of the future now,” he says.

A wild hen turkey does not mind socializing with humans, as Mel and Donnie Kelly have found out.

The bird just literally came knocking on their front door of their home near Yountsville about two weeks ago.

“The first night she was here she pecked on the door as if she wanted to come inside,” Mel Kelly said and laughed. “I looked up and there was a wild turkey looking in my home. Then she tried to get in through a window.”

The bird, which the Kellys call “Turkey,” does not have any set patterns for schedules.

“I found out she has visited all my neighbors,” Mel said. “She will disappear for a few days and then return.”

Mel has been able to get close to the turkey without the bird showing any signs of stress.
“She pretty much does what she wants to,” Mel said.

Mel has photographed the turkey sitting in his porch swing, and sitting close to the cat near the front door. At night, the turkey has used the Kellys roof for a sleeping perch.

The cat, which the couple named “Cat,” wandered upon the Kelly’s property about two years ago and stayed.
The turkey is picky when it comes to a specific food she loves — shelled corn.

“My daughter (Mindy Poole), who rehabilitates animals, gave me some corn mixed with bird seed to feed the turkey,” Mel said. “The turkey would not touch the corn and bird seed mixture. She will eat, if she’s hungry, shelled hard corn my wife and I throw out to her.”

The local Indiana conservation officer knows of the turkey’s presence. It is not confined and comes and goes as it pleases, Mel said.
Mel hopes the turkey gets tired and finds a new location to hang out. He is concerned his garden crops, like tomatoes, would be too tempting for the turkey to pass up.

“When the tomatoes are ripe I may have problem,” Kelly said. “We’re not going to do anything to encourage her to stay.”