June 6 • 2019 5
jn
E
ver watch Animal Fight
Night (AFN) on the
National Geographic
cable network Nat Geo Wild?
It features fascinating species
in the animal kingdom —
everything
from bugs
to baboons,
fish to fowl
— going toe
to toe, tusk to
tusk, horn to
horn, or what-
ever extremity
the evolution-
ary process provided the
featured animals on each
episode’
s fight card.
Animal Fight Night is truly
the survival of the fittest and is far
more educational than the fights you
see on Bravo’
s The Real Housewives
of New Jersey, which is survival of the
stupidest.
Well, I have exciting news that will
have the producers of AFN packing
their camera gear and hustling to
West Bloomfield to chronicle argu-
ably their most intriguing battle to
date — an interspecies free-for-all
featuring two wild turkeys vs. 75-year
old Elana Lerner of West Bloomfield!
A few weeks ago, Elana was on a
nature walk near 14 Mile and Drake
when she happened upon a small
gang of gobblers and
what ensued was a tur-
key turf war.
Elana planned on
innocently strolling
past the birds, but the
feathered fowl would
have none of it. Two of
the male birds lunged
toward her. Startled, she froze in fear
and attempted to swat the turkeys
away with her cell phone, but to no
avail. That’
s when she chose a dif-
ferent tactic you might call “Turkey
Whispering.” It was more like a tur-
key conversation.
Elana told me she confronted
the birds saying: “OK, who will be
stronger. You or me?!” It turned out
to be the turkeys. Two passing cars
witnessed the bird vs. human alterca-
tion and came to Elana’
s aid, stopping
and distracting the turkeys until they
retreated.
Lessoned learned: Never negotiate
with terrorist turkeys. Elana was left
bruised and battered but thankfully
not bloodied by the encounter.
It turns out Elana is a photography
enthusiast and, even while caught
in the middle of her turkey trauma,
she had the wherewithal to snap pic-
tures documenting the encounter on
her iPhone. Her only regret was not
hitting the video button to capture
live-action footage.
Unfortunately, while on another
walk a few days later, Elana sustained
further injuries when she lost another
fight — this time with a
broken piece of sidewalk.
She fell and suffered a bro-
ken elbow that required
a visit to the emergency
room. Thankfully, she
avoided surgery, but not a
sling that will be with her
well into June.
While on the mend,
Elana couldn’
t resist
returning to the scene of
the crime. She drove back
and, sure enough, the tur-
keys lay in wait. From the
safe confines of her car, she
rolled her window down
and yelled to the turkeys:
“Hi, what are you going
to do to me now?” The
turkeys actually ran toward the car!
Elana swears they recognized her
voice.
Elana moved here from Israel 19
years ago. She never could’
ve predict-
ed she would survive the Gulf War
but lose a fight to a couple of wild
turkeys.
I’
m no stranger to these turkeys.
I’
ve seen them grazing in our neigh-
borhood, and last year I witnessed a
lone, rogue turkey holding up traffic
in all directions while it boldly stood
in the middle of the intersection at
Maple and Middlebelt.
In the meantime, after hearing
Elana’
s story I think I’
ve come up
with a foolproof way to stave off a
wild turkey encounter. I would just
stare that bird down and say: “Hey,
you, I understand you taste like
chicken.” ■
Alan Muskovitz is a writer, voice-over/acting
talent, speaker and emcee. Visit his website at
laughwithbigal.com.
views
for starters
Terrorist Turkeys in West Bloomfi
eld!
letters
The Historic Black-
Jewish Coalition
The article on Brenda Lawrence in
your May 23 edition (“Solidifying
Relationships,
” page 32) evoked memo-
ries of an earlier period of history. Her
efforts to create a Black Jewish Caucus
in Congress mirror an earlier period
of Detroit and American history when
blacks, Jews and Labor worked together
politically.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Detroit’
s
black and Jewish populations were
the targets of anti-Semitism and rac-
ism. Demagogues like Father Charles
Coughlin in Royal Oak and Gerald
L.K. Smith in Louisiana were broad-
casting anti-Semitic tirades, while
fascist and neo-Nazi groups were
attacking Jews, blacks and labor leaders
as being anti-American, furthering
Communism and baiting Americans to
enter the war against Germany.
In response, both in Detroit and else-
where, a coalition was formed between
black, Jewish and labor organizations,
to protect the rights of minorities in the
face of this onslaught of prejudice.
Sadly, we are once more experiencing
Elana Lerner
These “terrorist turkeys” were part of the gang that attacked Elana Lerner.
ELANA LERNER
continued on page 10
Alan Muskovitz