Part of his appeal was that Whittaker consistently evaded capture, and eventually authorities just gave up trying. Staff from Michigan’s department of natural resources tried to apprehend him twice with a rocket net—which is exactly what it sounds like—to no avail. “They did not want to unduly stress the bird, so after the second attempt, they let the turkey be,” Holly Vaughn of the DNR told me in an email. The Humane Society made “over a dozen attempts to capture and relocate Whittaker” as well, Welch told me. They also set out a trap, but someone stole it.

“Turkeys are extremely clever birds and are generally very wary when they perceive that something dangerous may be close by,” Vaughn added. “This bird responded well to the perceived danger of the rocket net, but did not seem to perceive cars as a danger.”

Indeed, he exhibited a blatant disrespect for the killing power of cars, often pecking at them, or lying languidly in the road as they rolled by. “There are personalities to some degree,” Carpenter said. “Some birds are a lot more tolerant of people and are much more bold.”

Brian Malley, a psychologist at the University of Michigan in the nearby town of Ann Arbor, thinks there are three main reasons why Whittaker captured people’s attention—and held it for so long. One was the obvious: his location. Being in a major intersection, “people are seeing him as they go to work in the morning and as they come home,” Malley said. “A time when people are particularly interested in finding something that’s going to add color to their daily life.”

“Another factor was that if you didn’t want to hit him, you had to watch out for him. He commanded your attention,” he adds.

And lastly, “he was a very good foil for people to project onto and personalize.”

Lori Clark, a 53-year-old bus driver for the nearby Lincoln Consolidated School District, vividly remembers the first time she saw Whittaker. She was on the bus, driving high schoolers home at the end of the day. “The sky was so turquoise, and this little turkey was just standing there so tall and so proud, and he was so golden brown. He just reflected against that turquoise sky and it was like he glowed. It was almost like a sense of peace came over me—all I could do was smile the rest of my route. I don’t know if you believe in this stuff, but it was almost like an angel.”

But light and dark are inseparable, and one of the laws of being online is that a group of people may not gather to enjoy something fun and silly without it also devolving into heated arguments and hurt feelings.

There were those who thought the bird should be moved, and those who wanted him to stay. There were hunters who posted videos of turkeys being shot (these among the few who Gray banned), and people who simply said that they weren’t going to slam their brakes and put themselves at risk for the sake of a turkey who didn’t know better than to get out of the road.