Man Eats Crow Over Turkey Hunt

OK, his holiday promotion for selling auto parts turned out to be a turkey. But now Glenn McElroy has a bigger problem on his hands: what to do with the 320 birds running around his salvage yards.

The Pick Your Part president’s advertising campaign for four Southern California locations invited customers, starting Friday, to buy an auto part, then get a turn chasing turkeys around the yards. If they could catch one, they could take it home for 25 cents.

Then People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals got wind of the marketing scheme and fired off angry letters to animal control officials. They, in turn, have put an end to “The Great American Turkey Hunt” before it even started, ordering McElroy to cease and desist or face criminal charges.

He is complying, albeit a bit sheepishly.

“This really backfired on me,” said McElroy, who suffered numerous wisecracks around his Anaheim office Wednesday. “I thought it’d be cute to give my customers live birds, but it caused a turmoil. Now I’ve got 320 turkeys.”

He is hurriedly trying to find an organization that feeds the poor for Thanksgiving. If it takes live donations, that is. Most organizations would need a permit to kill the birds, so now McElroy is searching for a cooperative slaughterhouse too. Individuals are allowed to kill animals for their own consumption as long as it is done humanely, according to animal control and health officials.

The failed gimmick has set McElroy back $5,000 just to buy the birds from a Fresno farm. Then there’s the cost of advertising, trucking, not to mention turkey feed (“They eat like pigs”) for a tab he hasn’t yet totaled.

McElroy can’t quite figure out what the flap is all about.

“I didn’t see anything wrong with it,” said McElroy, who has been caring for the noisy turkeys for about a week now. “I still don’t see anything wrong with it. I’ve been treating them humanely. They’re in a pen with shade and water. We’ve bought tons of food.”

The promotion was to be a “test run” at two Pick Your Part yards in Wilmington, one in Sun Valley and one in Anaheim. In future years, McElroy hoped to expand it to his 17 yards elsewhere in California and Texas.

But that dream ended when he got back to the office after lunch Wednesday and was greeted by Los Angeles and Orange County animal control officers, who came armed with a cease-and-desist order and a list of laws he’d be breaking if he went through with the turkey chase.

Chief among them is the law that prohibits torturing and tormenting animals.

“It’s inhumane,” said Los Angeles animal services spokeswoman Jackie David. “The turkeys could hurt themselves. It’s very stressful for the turkeys.”

McElroy also was cited for the turkeys’ somewhat cramped conditions and dirty water. But David said the auto-parts president quickly fixed the problem.

PETA officials said they were pleased by the response of the animal control agencies. And, although this holiday sales pitch was a bit unorthodox, they said they’re used to fighting off strange turkey ideas every year about this time.

A radio station in Portland, Ore., for example, is holding Tyrese the Turkey hostage, threatening to execute him if ample funds are not raised by Thanksgiving for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. PETA also is protesting that scheme.

“At Thanksgiving, we pull out all the stops,” said PETA’s vegan campaign coordinator Bruce Frierich. “We attempt to speak up for turkeys.”