Muster cluster

June 6, 2018 2:32 PM

A neighbourhood in Surrey, British Columbia has been home to a lot of peacocks for quite a while. Right now, it's mating season, and the male peacocks have been spotted throwing down with their own reflections on parked cars. One resident recently took matters into his own hands, illegally felling a tree that the peacocks were roosting in at night. The situation escalated again earlier this week with the alleged assault of a bylaw officer investigating complaints about a man feeding the peacocks. Other residents have taken things a little more in stride.
posted by mandolin conspiracy (44 comments total)

Peacocks are terrible and you should never feed them. They are mean gigantic pigeons.
posted by that girl at 2:58 PM on June 6, 2018 [11 favorites]

Of course it's Surrey!

Lovely Surrey. The only place where I ever saw one of these actually on the street. It was white with pink trim. Being driven by a guy in track pants and a wife-beater t-shirt. His girlfriend carried a chihuahua like it was a purse.

Google surrey jokes. I'm not going to post them here.
posted by Naberius at 3:09 PM on June 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

where do they go in the winter? it's CANADA. and why haven't the asshole geese murdered them yet?
posted by poffin boffin at 3:11 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Surrey's pretty mild in the winter, relative to, say, Edmonton, or Winnipeg.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:16 PM on June 6, 2018

Peacocks are terrible and you should never feed them.

Friends of mine had an across-the-street neighbour a few years back who left out bowls of cat food for the local skunks.

She was a Very Unpopular Person in the neighbourhood.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:17 PM on June 6, 2018

Doesn’t Canada have its own Thanksgiving? Just sayin’...
posted by TedW at 3:18 PM on June 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

are they delicious though, google is uncertain.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:31 PM on June 6, 2018

(Related Chowhound thread here)
posted by TedW at 3:32 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

You could market them as "sexy pigeon."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:33 PM on June 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

Peacocks are beautiful but definitely can be mean. My husband and I went to a park that was housing some peacocks once. There was a family there, and they were encouraging their tiny child (she must have been maybe 3? 4?) to toddle over to the peacocks and feed them some bread. Before we could say anything, and much to their surprise (and not to ours), the child was bitten. I'll never understand why people don't just leave wild animals alone. That peacock was nearly as big as the child!
posted by FireFountain at 3:35 PM on June 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

Wouldn't it be simplest to relocate the peacocks to various civic parks in Surrey? Or to a game farm?

Of course, like neighboring White Rock, Surrey council is so backward and dysfunctional, that would never ever happen.
posted by JamesBay at 3:36 PM on June 6, 2018

My college had peacocks free roaming (in Maryland--where do they go in winter? Nowhere. They exist on pure spite.). I can confirm that they are the absolute fucking worst, especially during mating season.
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:38 PM on June 6, 2018 [8 favorites]

> Surrey's pretty mild in the winter, relative to, say, Edmonton, or Winnipeg.

Your link for me shows weather for Surrey, UK. Here's average annual weather in Surrey, BC. (tl;dr: About five degrees F colder than in Surrey, UK)
posted by ardgedee at 3:39 PM on June 6, 2018

i and my cousin and a couple of strangers were horribly menaced by a furious peacock gang at the kunming zoo and the male half of the stranger couple abandoned his girlfriend to the crazed flapping pecking mob and it was extremely dramatic and i rescued her with the brave sacrifice of my bubble-o-bill ice cream pop, which was the last one the ice cream stand had btw, in case you dare question the value of this sacrifice.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:40 PM on June 6, 2018 [17 favorites]

This fancy hotel near me has peacocks roaming the grounds. They are regularly fed, and seemed pretty placid and friendly. And I'm the sort of person who really, really likes to touch things. But every time I got close to one of the peacock during a visit there, they just had this look on their face that told me not to touch them. They didn't move a feather, just looked at me and I faltered and had this dawning suspicion that I would lose a finger.

I still want to touch a peacock though.
posted by stillnocturnal at 3:46 PM on June 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

My mother's favorite joke when I was a kid:

What is a female peacocked called?

A pea-cunt!
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:12 PM on June 6, 2018 [9 favorites]

"To feed the crows."

The question is what is the man doing with the peacocks? Is this some kind of moneymaking scam?
posted by Scattercat at 4:34 PM on June 6, 2018

I have some sympathy for the residents. I live near to a park that has peacocks living in it, and the first time I heard one of them vocalizing I thought something horrible was happening to a child.

stillnocturnal: Your dream is not outside the realm of possibility.
posted by Grimgrin at 4:38 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm honestly surprised a resident hasn't tried to capture or poison them. They seem like a nuisance and as one of the articles indicates the city/province isn't doing much because the birds fall into a grey area. It's not like they're some endangered local bird that has a protected nesting area.

I'm kinda surprised someone soaked up a $10K fine for cutting down a tree rather than just going out and rounding up the birds.

Also, while Surrey is indeed mild relative to the rest of Canada, I'm pretty impressed feral peacocks survive that well up there. Aside from people feeding them, there can't be that much to eat in the Vancouver suburbs.
posted by GuyZero at 4:46 PM on June 6, 2018

For a few years in the 1970s I lived on Devon Road in Cayuga Heights NY, which is next to Cornell and Ithaca, as a tenant in a faculty widow's house. She told us it used to be called Snake Road, but the name was changed at the behest of Mrs. Roy Park, down the road, the wife of a newspaper magnate, for whom "Snake Road" was insufficiently grand. She and Roy lived in a big Tudor mansion down the road and kept peacocks, who would regularly wander up our way. But other than that, things didn't get out of hand a la Surrey. Strangely enough, I ended up in the newspaper business, but I never again ran into Mr. or Mrs. Roy Park.
posted by beagle at 5:07 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I thought something horrible was happening to a child.

You are not alone. For anyone who luckily hasn't heard them in person, in mating season, they are INCREDIBLY LOUD. I used to have a tape of the ones across the street from where I lived, drowning out the straight-pipes Harley accelerating up the street between us. I will go to great lengths to never live near them again. Because they are loud.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:10 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm honestly surprised a resident hasn't tried to capture or poison them.

FWIW, one of the neighbors is feeding the animals. Surrey, BC, is not all that cold in the winter (rarely below freezing). I live nearby in Victoria, and the big, beautiful public park down the street is home to a colony of the birds that stay there throughout the winter.

Anyway, you pose an interesting question. I do not believe peacocks are a protected species, although it seems that if you want to want to kill nuisance birds there are legal ways, versus methods that are illegal.

While suburbanites are typically a weird, sociopathic and violent lot, I think there is probably a strong social stigma against killing animals.

The SPCA also states:

The BC SPCA does not support killing birds for nuisance reasons. Killing is rarely necessary and control methods should be selected to cause the least harm to the animal’s welfare. If attractants have not been removed, more birds may arrive, so follow-up monitoring is needed.

The BC SPCA strongly encourages non-lethal, non-contact methods. Prevention and exclusion comes first, followed by deterrence, and if necessary, eviction. Eviction should be done carefully to avoid potentially orphaning young.

posted by JamesBay at 5:17 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Aha. In Beacon Hill Park, a wonderful and sprawling civic park just up the block from me, city parks employees actually feed the peacocks (which explains how they survive the winter).

The reason why peacocks have not completely taken over Beacon Hill Park is because they can only nest inside of the high chain-link fence that surrounds the petting zoo. Any nests outside of the fence are supposedly raided by raccoons, rats and other predators.

I walk in the park every day (sometimes twice a day) and early in the morning I have seen peacocks roosting high up in the trees around here.
posted by JamesBay at 6:16 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

This fancy hotel near me has peacocks roaming the grounds.

I stayed at a not-fancy hotel once that had peacocks wandering around, and holy hell they were loud. I would not be pleased to have them in my neighborhood.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:28 PM on June 6, 2018

Peacocks are flamboyant murder-birds. Our local zoo has plenty, and they roam free, threatening children, and looking for love.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:44 PM on June 6, 2018 [8 favorites]

Yeah, so far as I can tell the Milwaukee County Zoo's free roaming peacocks aren't really bothered by the regularly below-freezing winters we have, but they're certainly getting fed by the zoo so they don't have to scrounge for food. I mean, they get a bit of an outdoor shelter arrangement setup for them to take advantage of, but it's mostly just nesting materials and hay, I don't think they have (or would take) building access.

I assume their wings are clipped? Or maybe they know a good thing? Because we don't have feral peacocks in town. Yet.
posted by Kyol at 7:00 PM on June 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

(also, as an aside, go to your local zoo in the winter. It's great, you basically get the place to yourself, and the animals are a lot less burnt out on human contact so they notice the hairless ape on the other side of the moat.)
posted by Kyol at 7:05 PM on June 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

Doesn’t Canada have its own Thanksgiving? Just sayin’...

are they delicious though, google is uncertain.

One of our neighbours has peacocks on her property, and she felt the population was getting too big so we trapped one on Canadian thankgiving and cooked it in a wood-fired cob oven. It was OK, pretty tough and gamey but that's to be expected.
posted by borsboom at 7:21 PM on June 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

How to cook a peacock
posted by unliteral at 7:24 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Should you spatchcock a peacock?
posted by TedW at 7:29 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

although it seems that if you want to want to kill nuisance birds there are legal ways, versus methods that are illegal.

From that doc, it is illegal to use these techniques to kill non-protected birds:

- maceration
- thoracic compression

These are the two most impossible ways to kill a peacock. I'm actually laughing out loud picturing two people holding down a struggling live peacock while a third person tries to give it chest compressions. I'd put $5 on the peacock.
posted by GuyZero at 8:13 PM on June 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

Although, as it turns out, thoracic compressions is the euthanasia method of choice for ornithologists. But mostly for smaller bird it seems.
posted by GuyZero at 8:19 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Next time I'm called upon to euthanize an ornithologist, I shall keep that in mind. Thanks!
posted by Naberius at 8:25 PM on June 6, 2018 [16 favorites]

Aha. In Beacon Hill Park, a wonderful and sprawling civic park...

When I lived a few blocks away from Beacon Hill Park, we had a peacock who would come and visit our garden from time to time, usually waking us up and rooting up our plants.

We had a house meeting where we seriously discussed whether or not to kill and eat it.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 9:37 PM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Aside from people feeding them, there can't be that much to eat in the Vancouver suburbs.

Try walking a food-motivated dog around there and you will take a different view.

WHO LEAVES RANDOM PIECES OF CHICKEN ON THE STREETS

VANCOUVER SUBURBANITES, THAT'S WHO
posted by praemunire at 11:25 PM on June 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

I was searching for something else but look at this tiny little kitten menacing this huge peacock!
posted by AFABulous at 9:32 AM on June 7, 2018 [3 favorites]

Obviously the answer is to flood the neighborhood with tiny kittens....
posted by AFABulous at 9:32 AM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

they roam free, threatening children, and looking for love.

I feel like some variant of this will be found on Nelson Muntz' tombstone
posted by notorious medium at 9:50 AM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

My family moved from San Francisco out to the 'burbs when I was 9. A nearby farm had peacocks and I distinctly remember having the realization (and feeling somewhat let down) when I first heard them sound off, that their cry was used as "generic scary jungle animal" noise in many of the old, cheesy movies that played on local TV at the time.
posted by agatha_magatha at 12:32 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

WHO LEAVES RANDOM PIECES OF CHICKEN ON THE STREETS

VANCOUVER SUBURBANITES, THAT'S WHO

I regret to tell you that this appears to be a near-universal pattern. Wtf, people and their chicken bones. In my area in DC, people seem to think that anything semi-organic can just decompose in any nearby flower bed. Once, in Seattle, my dog found an *intact roast chicken* in the bushes. I saw a whole new side of the same neighborhood once I started walking a dog around it.
posted by mosst at 2:05 PM on June 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

Go full medieval and cook a peacock that it might seem to be alive. Or if putting the skin back on is screaming 'salmonella' too hard at you, an 18th century recipe for peacock pie gives you all the display but the reassurance of more crust between meat and germs.

I note that the first recipe calls for killing the bird via a quill to the brain, so given advances in technology taking one of the buggers out with a biro would seem to be the thing. I suspect medieval cooks had more experience with bird murder though.
posted by Vortisaur at 2:20 PM on June 7, 2018

Had a high school friend whose mom had some peacocks. Holy shit those things are LOUD and they do not understand the concept of having a time when you sleep and stop screaming. That woman who goes on about how they live in the country and "...those birds, that's their habitat. It's springtime, they're mating," Woman, they are an introduced nuisance species and you live in the goddamn suburbs. If you are so concerned about them, let them scream and fuck in YOUR backyard. I think you will change your tune when 40 of them are conducting their love lives at 4am in the tree outside your window for over three years with no abatement.
posted by Foam Pants at 9:42 PM on June 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the guy who kept the peacocks across the street from me also thought he lived in the country, and didn't. He had them in cages. If he'd let them loose, they would have not lasted long, with the car traffic.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:49 AM on June 8, 2018

Grimgrin: "I live near to a park that has peacocks living in it, and the first time I heard one of them vocalizing yt I thought something horrible was happening to a child. "

I remember this figuring into a memorable part of Henry Reed's Babysitting Service.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:56 PM on June 10, 2018