Abstract
Since the first day I was infected with "bird fever," I had a hankering to own peafowl. I thought it would be rather spectacular having a peacock strut around in my back yard. However, I live in a residential area so before I acquired any peafowl I consulted both my neighbors. Both have huge dogs, one of which, on occasion, will bark all night. Both agreed that I could "try on a temporary basis" to see if it was indeed feasible to keep peafowl in relatively confined environment. I had it all figured out. As soon as I would get my birds, I would have them pinioned thus limiting their flight and avoiding any confrontation with either neighbor's dog.
The big day came. I bought two mature hens and a cock. I kept them in an aviary fifteen feet square at the back of my lot for nearly three weeks before my friendly vet could come over and pinion them. As each surgery was completed we released the bird to wander around in the yard at will. Scarcely had we finished when to my horror I saw all three birds on top of the block wall separating my yard from my neighbors.
I soon learned that nothing can stop a peafowl from flying. We managed to catch all three and clip all the feathers of one wing thinking that this would make the birds lopsided in flight. Wrong! They could still fly to the roof of the house, the top of the fence or any other place they desired. I have since discovered that no amount of altering flight feathers can stop a peafowl from flying.
That first week after the pinioning was a strain in neighborhood relations. Often early in the morning I would get a call from a neighbor who would tell me that one of my birds was on his roof. After several mornings of chasing peafowl from rooftop to rooftop, I has just about decided that the experiment had failed. Then fate took a hand. On the same morning both peahens went over my fence in different directions. The cock was not the wandering kind. One hen was met by the neighbor's Saint Bernard and was immediately dispatched to bird heaven. The other was met by a Bassett Hound who grabbed the bird's tail about the same time my neighbor grabbed the hen's neck. The ensuing tug of war found the Bassett Hound with a mouth full of feathers and resulted in a much frightened peahen home to stay. Since that day she has never gone over the fence.
We now settled down to a relatively normal routine. It seemed that each evening about an hour before dark, the surviving hen and the cock were content to be herded back into their aviary for safe keeping that night. I kept their food in the flight and put it there just before roundup time each evening. Since they made their Harpo Marx noises only during the daytime, I had no further complaints from the neighbors.