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But four to six turkeys are back in the vicinity of the busy Columbia Avenue-Donerville Road intersection, literally stopping traffic, roosting on area businesses and strolling among startled drivers.
Tuesday afternoon, two of them were taking their good old time crossing Columbia Avenue while cars backed up and waited. Some drivers fumed, some were amused.
"They're all over Columbia Avenue tying up traffic. Right now, they're over at Robert's Automotive," veteran turkey watcher Joe Miller said Wednesday afternoon. "They were on the roof watching traffic the other day.
"A cop told me they get four to five calls a day. They just herd them off the road," said Miller, who works at B&J Automotive at the intersection of Columbia and Donerville.
The intersection east of Mountville is where Manor, East Hempfield and West Hempfield townships converge and all three township police departments are familiar with the turkeys.
The same flock was in the area last year, walking through parking lots and generally acting as if they owned the place.
"There's really not much we can do. They (police) just kind of shoo them away," said a clerk with Manor Township police.
"Since they built all the houses out there, they have no place to go. We have called ORCA and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and they said there's not much they can do. Just shoo them away."
Miller said a woman in the area recently told him that she has buried two of the flock, which apparently were hit by vehicles.
A Conestoga resident, Miller said he sees turkeys in his back yard all the time. "I don't like to see anything hurt," he said of the turkeys' devil-may-care road crossings.
Semi-wild turkeys wandering into urban and suburban areas is a growing phenomenon in Lancaster County.
In March, a hen turkey grazed in Lancaster city yards and perched on rooftops on East Orange Street, across from Reservoir Park and Lancaster County Prison.
In April 2006, a flock of four turkeys wandered through Strasburg for days, flying onto rooftops and even pecking on one home's patio door.
One startled resident initially thought they were lawn ornaments.
A week earlier, a Pennsylvania Game Commission wildlife conservation officer was called to Churchtown, where two gobblers were seen in yards and standing on cars.
In Marietta the same year, four turkeys startled a woman walking her dog along the railroad tracks on Front Street.
A concerted turkey-stocking program by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the National Wild Turkey Federation has resulted in a growing wild turkey population in parts of the county, especially in the River Hills in southern parts of the county and the Furnace Hills in the north.
But one wildlife conservation officer during the 2006 sightings speculated that many of the incidents of turkeys in populated areas were from escaped or released pen-raised birds.
