Dawn Patrol with America's Silliest Dog Gets Risky...

If we head out at dawn, go up the driveway, turn right on the fire road, and cross Burton Ridge, we enter... the woods of Rossmoore:

ContraCostaTimes.com | 02/17/2007 | Residents cry fowl, bring in hired gun: A Walnut Creek retirement community is using a new tactic in the escalating suburban struggle to rein in wild turkeys that damage landscaping and cover sidewalks and decks with bird poop. A hunter is shooting the birds with a silencer-equipped rifle.... Rossmoor in Walnut Creek is believed to be the first Bay Area community to call in a hired gun with a license to kill, state and federal wildlife managers say....

"The turkey population has exploded here, like everywhere else," Donner said, "and in some areas, they left so much defecation that people couldn't get by on the walkways." The federal hunter uses a .22-caliber rifle equipped with a silencer to avoid noise that might disturb Rossmoor residents or scare away the turkeys after the first one in a flock gets whacked.... "It's very unobtrusive and efficient in a neighborhood," said Larry Hawkins, an agriculture department spokesman....

"They're very prolific, and they don't have a lot of predators, especially in these areas around housing developments," said Lt. Sheree Christiansen of the state Department of Fish and Game. She supervises wardens in Contra Costa and Alameda counties....

One wildlife expert at the nonprofit Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek questioned the effectiveness of the turkey shooting. For every turkey shot, the survival odds of others improve because of the diminished competition for food and shelter, said Susan Heckly, Lindsay's wildlife rehabilitation manager...

What a way to go: mistaken for a turkey in the pre-dawn gloaming. Fortunately a 22 is not a very big slug.

This morning at least one large, gobbling flock of turkeys had crossed Burton Ridge going the other way, seeking sanctuary on our property.