STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A Dongan Hills man says he has nowhere to turn after a turkey laid 16 eggs outside his home last week.

Richard Gambardella, 71, said he tried asking 311 and the ASPCA for help removing the unborn birds from the side of his Liberty Avenue home's front stoop. Neither group could help him.

A special license is required to remove turkeys.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) website says a special depredation permit from a regional DEC wildlife office is needed to remove the turkeys.

Removing bobcats and black bears requires the same permit.

Messages left for a local DEC spokesperson and permit administrator were not returned Monday night.

Gambardella said the makeshift nest, hidden away under shrubbery in front of his house, and the mother hen, are proving to be hazardous.

"It's aggressive, like a rooster would be," he said of the bird. "It's their kids. It's defending its young."

His home, near the intersection of Mason Avenue, is around the corner from the Staten Island University Hospital campus in Ocean Breeze, where turkeys have made their homes for at least 18 years.

An Advance article in July 2000 says police responded to guide just nine of the birds through traffic. That number has grown at least 10 times, despite multiple efforts to remove the birds.

The North American wild turkey is native to the borough, but had been eradicated long before this group infested Ocean Breeze.

Experts speculate that the birds were released by a local on the grounds of the South Beach Psychiatric Center, and, in June 2001, a wildlife rehabilitation and education center was built there as a response to the birds.

Multiple reports of turkey-induced traffic jams, and locals complaining about the birds, have been featured in the pages of the Advance since then.

There was even one report of man-on-turkey violence when someone in 2007 fired bottle rockets at a group of the birds near Laconia Avenue.

At least one official effort was made in 2016 to curb the population. More than 100 birds were rounded up, according to multiple reports at the time.

Since 2014, the And-Hof Sanctuary in the state's Catskills region has taken more than 150 turkeys from Staten Island, sanctuary representative Kurt Andernach told the Advance in April.

Andernach said hundreds of turkeys remain on the Island -- a number that is expected to grow as mating season approaches. "We are concerned because they will continue to breed and the problem won't stop - it's self-perpetuating," he said.



The sanctuary is still interested in giving the remaining turkeys a new home; one that's away from noise and traffic -- but funding is needed for the capture, care and transport of the birds.