Leave those turkeys alone – they eat up to 200 ticks per day

To The Daily Sun,

Been reading how tick population has increased and people are finding themselves to be "lunch" and it's scary.

Also read that a wild turkey may eat up to 200 ticks a day. I’ve seen them up to 20 roaming a path feeding as they move. That’s perhaps up to 4,000 ticks in one day. In 10 days in a given area that’s 40,000 ticks which I’d not have to worry about as I enjoy walking in the same area. Not just turkeys, there are other ground birds, quail, guinea fowl and surprisingly opossums.

Somehow we think it is okay to kill every last turkey in the area, can’t put up with the wild fowl, don’t have the tolerance for their noise and habits; like the peepers in the spring. Nature is supposef to be quiet, any noise is to be pleasant. Then again we have never really listened to ourselves and since ticks don’t hear, our presence does not scare them off. I fully realize that it will never happen that the poachers won’t stop; taking for food, body parts and the pleasure of the "kill." They don’t even have the sense that leaving a few will insure their presence next year and the years after. But the State could put in place a moratorium – shorten the killing season(s).

People worried about ticks themselves in their community ban the killing, or learn to live with what is left of nature after they have stripped the land, planted their favorite trees, brush and lawns.

You’ll be told that it would hardly put a dent in the tick population, but one female will lay 3,000 eggs, 100 of them removed a day would eliminate 300,000; in 10 days 3,000,000 eggs being laid. Find yourself intolerant of nature, stop killing it.

GW Brooks

Meredith