Instagram and talking turkeys with the New York Times brings a wild ride

How the Instagram account “Turkeys Of UMN” came to be and how, five years later, the people behind it are still sharing tender turkey love.

It’s not every day—or even every lifetime—that you land on the front page of the New York Times, but for the University of Minnesota alums who run the “Turkeys Of UMN” Instagram account (@turkeysofumn), that, and so much more, really happened. Since then, let’s just say it’s been a wild ride. 

As Paige Robinson ’24 recalls, it was 2020, and she and Amanda Ichel ’24 were in a First Year Seminar course together. They’d met up to study and, as students do, soon began talking about the wild turkeys on campus. 

“I was like, ‘This is insane, but do you want to make a turkey Instagram account with me?’” says Robinson. Ichel—who graduated with an individually designed degree in neuroscience, psychology, and technical writing and is now pursuing a masters in educational psychology—said yes, despite being generally afraid of birds. 

Robinson, who is from the East Coast, says she’d never seen a wild turkey until arriving at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. “The fact that there were just turkeys that lived there was insane to me,” she says. 

Taking inspiration from a University of Wisconsin-Madison turkey account, the pair launched their own on Oct. 20, 2020, with a post reading “Why did the turkeys cross the road? To go follow the coolest new campus turkey based Instagram account of course!”

While the UW account has since fallen by the wayside, the Turkeys Of UMN account now clucks in at more than 5,000 followers. 

The pair rely on submissions from students and other fans, especially now that they’ve graduated. Since launch, they’ve posted dozens of turkey videos, photos, and even fascinating turkey facts, as in a post titled “Meet the Flockers.” In the process, they’ve learned more than they ever dreamed.

“I don't think I appreciated that they slept in the trees until, like, year three,” says Robinson.

Achieving turkey fame

With posts like “Turkeys can be territorial when comfortable. Do not be scared – they can smell fear and will show you who’s boss,” it’s no wonder the account is a hit. 

So much so, in fact, that in 2021 New York Times journalist Mitch Smith, who was in town covering the mayoral election, reached out to the account. 

“He told us he Googled ‘turkeys, Minnesota,’ and he found the account, and so he sent a message that I thought was a scam for, like, two days,” says Robinson. 

“I remember running to my roommates and being like, ‘I got messaged by the New York Times’ after I Googled him and confirmed that this was probably a real guy.”

Soon “Turkeys of UMN” was part of a lead story in the Times during Thanksgiving of 2021.

“My parents bought about a dozen copies that I still have at home,” says Robinson. “It was so cool.”

So cool, in fact, that it played a small part in landing Robinson an internship and a job as a government analyst. 

“I actually put that on my resume, because it shows social media skills,” says Robinson. 

“And the internship that I got, which is where I’m now working full-time—granted, it wasn't the deciding factor—but it made me really memorable. They said, ‘We know this, we've read about this.’ So it was the coolest thing ever,” says Robinson. She admits her Management Information Systems degree from Minnesota Carlson also played a role.

So what’s the appeal of the account, and is there a deeper societal lesson to be learned from its success? Maybe.

“So many people seem to love the turkeys. I think people just love having a space where they can support something and be positive, and I try really hard to keep the account PG-13 and reasonably apolitical,” says Robinson. “I think it's been beneficial for people to just have a nice little space where they can be happy and supportive, and there's just silliness going on.”

Though Ichel has largely stepped back from the account, Robinson, now nearly two years out from graduation, says that she isn’t quite ready to let it go.

“It feels like such a big part of my college experience,” says Robinson. “And it feels like such a nice unifying force that letting it go feels like closing a chapter I'm not ready to end yet.”