Pasadena peacocks: Fowl shrieks from a union of lovers

Pasadena Star News

First published in the Pasadena Star News in 2020

All the trouble started when the king of the demons left his golden abode on the island of Lanka to invade heaven. A surprise attack — all the gods fled in terror. Indra, known as the “god with a thousand eyes,” took refuge under the wings of a peacock. In those days, peacocks were dull and colorless creatures. But the peacock was just the ticket. And in gratitude for this protection, Indra granted the peacock the blessing of a thousand beautiful blue-green eyes of his own to adorn his unusually long tail.

The national bird of India, peacocks have long been seen as a harbinger of the coming rains. Bringing relief from those unbearable days of mounting heat, the monsoon carries the blessings of renewed life and fertility. Likened to a union of lovers, the ancients saw the rains as the coming together of heaven and earth.

But, wow, peacocks are loud! During mating season, their shrieks can wake the dead! Beautiful and loud. But what are they doing roaming the streets of Pasadena? For me, it was definitely not love at first sight. In fact, I complained bitterly about our neighborhood “muster.” Their fingernails-on-the-blackboard mating calls had me up night after night. And I need my beauty sleep! I was initially surprised that no one had started an online petition to get rid of them, as had happened in one village in Durham County, England, where the population was similarly kept awake at night and terrorized by a pride of peacocks. I will even admit I laughed when one of the beleaguered villagers wondered about how they might taste!

“I’ve never heard of roasted peacock, have you?”

Complaints in Durham included sleep deprivation, peacock poop and damage to cars — and we have all that! But my neighbors were surprisingly patient, “The kids just love them,” they said. Two neighbors had even been seen surreptitiously feeding them.

I just hated them — until I finally saw the males in action.

“My Lords and Peacocks” said King George III.

The first time I saw King George (my current favorite), he was gazing at himself in the reflection of a very clean and shiny BMW down the street. At first, I thought he was admiring how pretty he was. I could hardly blame him. But then he began pecking the door of the car. So this is why people in our neighborhood are complaining about “tiny dents” in their cars. That’s what you get for having such a clean car?

Watching him, I realized he was pecking at his own reflection, because he thought that it was another bird!

OK, maybe he isn’t the brightest. But what a specimen. With his shimmering sapphire neck — that blue is like the heavenly firmament in a medieval illuminated manuscript. And his elegant crest? It’s like the crown of an emperor. Then there is the pièce de résistance: his train. His walking-around feathers, speckled like a cobra, vanish in flight as the blinding orange streak of his under feathers stream by you. Oh my God, am I falling in love?

Like the parrots here, there is a human story behind why we have roaming parties of peacocks in Pasadena. It all started when a certain Lucky Baldwin traveled out west from Ohio, in search of riches. And he found them too  —mainly in his investments in mining stocks and land. Friends with Wyatt Earp, he loved racehorses and imported peacocks from India to his large ranch in Arcadia, where they roamed free. Why peacocks? Well, they kill snakes and are better guards than watchdogs, he reported.

“You shall know the truth,” wrote Flannery O’Connor, “And the truth shall make you odd.”

Flannery was odd. Her peacocks, too. Guarding the gates of paradise at her Georgia farm was an ostentation (yes, that’s the word!) of peacocks. “I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply,” she wrote.“For I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.” And so it should be.