Many thought Albert the Turkey was stuffed after he fell fowl of the law in regional Victoria, but now a local business has plucked up the courage to give this wayward bird a new home.
Albert was apprehended earlier this month in Warrnambool, after leading police on not so much a wild goose chase as a wild turkey chase.
"Our crew just went to get some dinner down Liebig Street and here's this turkey walking down Liebig Street as you do on a Saturday night," Leading Senior Constable Greg Kew said.
"We sort of corralled it down a laneway … and we snuck up on it and I though 'Oh well, I'm pretty close, I may as well try to grab it'.
"There was fair bit of weight in it … it was no chicken that's for sure."
While it was a different experience for Leading Senior Constable Kew, he said it certainly was not a first.
"Sometimes we deal with turkeys of the human kind and sometimes we deal with turkeys of the animal kind," he said.
Albert finds a home with history
The previous owner gave Albert to Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum after the bird's run-in with the law.
"He was in transit between farms and the driver needed a box of noodles at the time and unfortunately Albert managed to jump out while they we getting some dinner," the museum's manager Paul Pinkerton said.
While Albert's new-found celebrity had taken Warrnambool by storm, Mr Pinkerton said the turkey fitted in with the museum's push to re-create 19th century Victoria.
"It's very likely that seaside villages in the 1840s through to the 1940s had turkeys in the village," he said.
"I imagine it was a source of food, potentially they drop quite a few feathers so they might have been used in some pillows.
"He fits in nicely here and the walk around the village here you can certainly hear his gobble."
