Mail carrier welcomes turkey on daily route, sort of: 'I can't say he's annoying. It's Thanksgiving'

Thanksgiving is a little more than a week away but some residents in Wisconsin have been watching one star turkey for weeks.

That's because a bird has been walking from home to home, keeping in step, with the postal worker who delivers the mail to the neighborhood on Tacoma Drive in Waukesha County.

"OK, seriously. This turkey has been stalking the mail truck throughout the entire neighborhood," resident Sherry Michaels said in a video she posted to Facebook on Monday. "Oh my God. ... This is so funny."

In the video, the bird can be seen chasing after the mail truck as it stopped to fill each home's mailbox.

"Oh my God," Michaels says in the video with a laugh. "This is so great."

Jeff Byrne, the mail carrier and subject of the bird's stalking, said he'd seen the turkey in the neighborhood since the summer.

"He didn't pay me...any attention at all in the first couple of months. But over the last month, he's acquainted himself quite well with the truck, and now he's started to follow me," Byrne told ABC affiliate WISN-TV.

Amused residents even took to filming the bird stalking Byrne.

Byrne said the two have formed a bit of a relationship at this point -- after an initial scare or two, that is.

"He did startle me one time last week when I was coming back to the truck. He kind of jumped up and flapped his wings, feathers, whatever it is. Got real close to my face," he said.

For now, Byrne said he hasn't been deterred from delivering mail each day by rain or sleet, so what's a large fowl with a shock by feathers?

"I'll be honest. In the beginning, it was, 'Get away from the truck,'" he said with a laugh.

Byrne, who's been a mail carrier for 20 years, has continued to do his job but with some added company from his new turkey friend.

"I can't say he's annoying. It's Thanksgiving," he told WISN-TV. "Too close to his holiday."