Arcadia motorcyclist survives collision with turkey
By Billy Cox
Published: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 9:04 p.m.
SARASOTA - When Lori Hansen leaves her digs in rural Arcadia, she rumbles her Harley-Davison onto Armadillo Trail, hits Opossum Road, then swings onto Gator Trail.
So there's really no need to lecture her on the perils of varmints and critters when riding a motorcycle.
"I was coming home one night," said the 42-year-old teacher from her hospital bed in St. Petersburg, "when I had this hog come right at me. It charged me over there, at Horse Creek Road."
But that's not what landed her in Bayfront Medical Center on Saturday afternoon. What flung her like a rag doll at 55 to 60 mph into a webbing of barbed wire as she hurtled west on State Road 72 last weekend was a wild turkey.
"I saw it out of the corner of my eye, for just a millisecond," said Hansen, who never wears a helmet. "I ducked left to avoid it but it hit me in my head, and I lost consciousness."
The bird, whose 20-pound carcass was recovered by a nearby resident and stuffed into a freezer, had bolted from pastureland east of Myakka River State Park shortly before noon. Hansen's fiance, Kurle Gibson, was trailing her in his Harley-Davidson Road King as they rode to Sarasota for his grandson's first birthday party. He'd never seen anything like it.
"Oh, we're infested by wild pigs out there, and it's nothing to see a half-dozen dead hogs or even a couple of dead deer by the side of the road coming out of Arcadia early in the morning," said Gibson, a carpenter. "One time my back tire ran over a raccoon, but that didn't do much except put a bunch of guts in my spokes.
"But I never would've guessed in a million years that a turkey would come out at noon like that."
Gibson watched in horror as Hansen's body tumbled through one fence and came to a stop on a second. Unable to get a signal on his cell phone, he flagged down helpful motorists and proceeded to pry Hansen off the barbs with his pliers.
Hansen, who suffered no broken bones or internal injuries, was helicoptered in serious condition to Bayshore Medical, where she was patched up with staples and stitches. The most serious wounds are from lacerations to her arm. She expects to be released at any day now.
Collisions with animals are not unheard of by experienced motorcyclists, but a wily turkey known for its caginess?
"Well, I've been hit by a bird before as I was going over Ringling Bridge," said Matt Glenn, parts manager for Granny's Motorsports in Manatee County. "But it was a seagull, and I was wearing a helmet. I've never heard of anybody hitting a turkey before."
Jimmy Procopio, a certified Motorcycle Safety Foundation instructor from Sarasota, just gasped at the tale.
"Oh my god! Are you kidding me?" he said. "Hit by a turkey? In the head? Without a helmet?"
Years ago, Procopio says he was tooling along on his motorcycle at 45 mph when a robin smacked into him head-on.
"These birds can fly all day at 40 miles an hour, so the total impact was, like, 80 miles an hour," he said. "Well now, I'm a big guy, and this robin hit me right between my face and the inside of my helmet. I had my sunglasses on, I had all these feathers in my mouth and it was all I could do to keep from wiping out.
"I'd say she had divine intervention going for her."
Gibson said he now wears a helmet everywhere he goes. Despite her close call, Hansen says she'll "have to see how it feels when I get back on" the bike, which escaped with minor damage.
And the dead turkey? "My neighbor, Pat Arthur, says he wants to stuff it for me," she said.
