Were there really wild turkeys roaming the streets of Wheaton?

“The Case of the Missing Turkeys” continues on from last week.

I began to see the birds walking on the streets of Wheaton in small groups. I had never seen wild turkeys in a residential area before. I quizzed people about the birds and nobody in the area was surprised by their presence.

I asked people from out of the area about the birds and they thought I was insane. I carried photos I had taken in my neighborhood to prove my sanity. People could not believe the Wheaton turkeys truly existed.

Now just a few years ago, I believed that the Wheaton turkeys were disappearing. It was a rare occurrence to see the birds on the streets anymore. I was spending a lot of time traveling on western DuPage County roadways looking for my birds. I cruised the forest preserves and couldn’t find birds. Where were they?

I began to be obsessed with the question of where my wild turkeys had gone. I believed that the turkey population in Wheaton was dwindling. I was seeing the birds less frequently, and I was sure of it. People were avoiding me because they thought I was going to talk about turkeys. I would talk about the turkeys and where they had gone with anybody who could not escape talking to me.

I asked neighbors if they had noticed that the Wheaton turkeys seemed to be disappearing. I’d usually be met with a blank stare and the person would ask me, “What turkeys are you talking about?”

Come on now. I didn’t dream up these turkeys. They were there, but it seemed like most people didn’t believe in their existence. I was not going to give up on my search for the birds.

Then, a couple years back, I was called by a fellow outdoors writer who talked to me about the Wheaton turkeys. The guy swore to me that he had anecdotal evidence that the Cantigny turkeys had been eradicated either by the county, the Forest Preserve District, the city of Wheaton or by Cantigny.

He could offer no concrete proof, though, that my turkeys had been slaughtered. He claimed the reason for the slaying of the turkeys was because they were a huge nuisance, especially to traffic in the area. Hmm?

I was enraged. Killing turkeys because they screw up traffic is not a good reason to do it. I was going to get to the bottom of “The Case of the Missing Turkeys,” and I was going to bring the culprits to justice. Vengeance would be mine, I swear.

I was positive that I had found a massive government cover-up. Maybe this wasn’t near the scope of Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK conspiracy, but I had an inclination that a Pulitzer Prize was in my future for cracking this case.

I kept on digging and digging to no avail. I called the DuPage County Animal Control Department. I was told they had never had a call regarding live turkeys in Wheaton before. They asked if I was sure what I had seen were turkeys. Yes, darn it. I know what turkeys are.

I talked to the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office and got no information. No luck came from the Forest Preserve Police. The Wheaton Police told me to talk to Animal Control. I talked to the state gendarmes — no luck.

I met a local Wheaton police officer. I asked him about the birds. His eyes lit up.

“You know, I wondered what happened to those birds. I used to park over on Mack Road, and I would practice my turkey calls right there because there were so many of those birds there,” he said.

“It wouldn’t take me long to call up some birds every time I went there. Those birds made a better caller out of me. I loved seeing and watching those turkeys behave. I haven’t seen a single bird in the last three or four years. I wondered what happened to them. It’s a damn shame they disappeared. Let me know if you find out what happened.”

All right. My sanity had been justified. There were turkeys in Wheaton and more than likely at Cantigny. I was going to find out what had happened to my turkeys if it was the last thing I did.

I’ll conclude “The Case of the Missing Turkeys” next week.

• Daily Herald Outdoors columnist Steve Sarley can be reached at sarfishing@yahoo.com.