How to Protect Your Home from a Peacock Invasion

When I was about twelve years old we had new neighbors move in next door. We lived out in the country, so “next door” meant about a quarter of a mile down the road and on the other side of some woods. However, in spite of the distance, the new neighbors made themselves known fairly quickly because they raised peacocks. Peacocks that knew how to break out of their pens. Peacocks that ravaged the countryside like an avian zombie horde.

You may be saying to yourself, “Oh, I love peacocks, they’re so beautiful.” If you are, then shut up. You must not have any first hand knowledge of peacocks, or at least you have never been in the position of having to fight them off while trying to mind your own business on your own property.

I have.

First, let’s get something straight. It is only the adult male peacock that has the impressive and colorful tail we all associate with peacocks. That tail is his way of ... well ... trying to get some tail.

The male peacock fans his plumage in order to scare off competing males and to get a female peacock (called a peahen) to go back to his apartment and listen to his jazz collection over a glass of wine.

Peahens are comparatively drab and are mostly covered with cream-colored or grey feathers. This fact of life must really piss off peahens, because every one I have ever met was a level of nasty that is usually only achieved by Naomi Campbell.

So when the peahens would get out of their pens, they would charge toward nearby farms and houses, intent upon destruction. With lines of peachicks trailing behind, the peahens would rip up flower beds and gardens like feather covered juggernauts. My aunt lived across the road from us, and the first time the birds got out my father got a frantic call from her pleading, "Come quick! There's a giant chicken on top of my car!!"

The new neighbors soon came to collect their fugitives but the cycle had begun. Escape, terrorize, and get captured. And if the neighbors weren't home, the terrorism phase could drag on for hours, since shooing these stubborn and determined birds away was only an exceedingly temporary fix. They'd come back. And they grew more confident. And nastier.

The neighbors, apprently throwing in the towel at building effective peacock enclosures, offered to loan us a cage that we could use when they weren't home and couldn't come over to catch the peacocks themselves. You heard me right. Instead of devoting time to reinforcing their pens, they decided to give us a crash course in capturing and restraining their peacocks for them.

Now, in order to understand why my parents went along with this you have to understand that my dad grew up on a farm and was used to all sorts of animal wrangling. I'm sure he thought that this was a reasonable way to deal with the problem, and that it would be good for me to be in charge of catching the peacocks if dad wasn't around. Let that sink in for a minute. I, as a twelve year old, was in charge of catching birds that were almost as tall as I was. What could go wrong?

By now you may be asking yourself, "How do you catch a peacock?" I bet you never thought you'd ask that question. Well, the answer is fairly straightforward. You grab their legs and flip them upside down and then put them in the cage. However, execution of that technique is a little more complicated, since the peacocks do not happily surrender their legs to you. No, they run away. So you have to corner them. Which pisses them off. Which meant playing a real life game of Angry Birds all the way back in the Commodore 64 era.

Try to imagine a twelve year old boy staring downward (only slightly) into the beady eyes of a peacock that he has just cornered and is now expected to grab. Want to take the boy's place? Didn't think so.

Fortunately I got pretty good at "the grab." I was able to perfect my technique with minimal battle scars. I would hold one hand up to draw the peacock's attention (and wrath) while readying my other hand to quickly swoop in underneath and grab the legs. With a quick flip, the peacock would turn into a furiously flapping embodiment of hate, pecking at the air in a desperate attempt to connect with its captor. Years later this experience would cause me a bit of confusion when I first encountered the phrase, "flipping the bird."

Eventually the neighbors got rid of the peacocks. However, my hard fought skills were not acquired in vain. Although I have not had to fight off any peacocks since those golden days of my youth, as a former research scientist I have had to wrangle my fair share of rats and monkeys. And at home I handle all wild animal issues in and around the house. Given my qualifications, I have therefore granted myself the title of "Beastmaster."

What? It's better than "Cock Whisperer."

For more by this author check out, "The Night Before School Starts," and "What's His Name Daddy?"