Hey California, the Peafowl Isn’t Your Scape-Bird | Connecting California

Why don’t you simply fly my satisfaction and me to Martha’s Winery?

As a result of we peafowl are bored with being California’s main scapegoat—I imply, scape-bird.

You Californians prefer to fake you’re extra humane and inclusive than the Floridians and Texans you denounce, for his or her cruelty to immigrant neighbors and others who won’t look or sound the identical as they do. However in terms of the way you deal with your blue and feathery neighbors, you Californians are not any higher than Ron DeSantis.

From the San Joaquin to the San Gabriel valleys, property homeowners and municipalities are ordering mass round-ups of my type, with out warrant or possible trigger. Having unlawfully detained my fellow peahens and peacocks, the authorities then search to relocate us—with out offering counsel or a court docket listening to—to farms on the outskirts of your main areas.

Think about being grabbed someday and informed you’re transferring from Pasadena—the leafy hometown I share with this column’s normal creator—to a dusty farm in Kern County, with none alternative within the matter. The horror! It’s sizzling up there, and I’m a cultured, city hen.

You people justify such atrocities by claiming that we’re international invaders—an “invasive species”—as a result of peafowl originated in India. Nevertheless it’s pure disinformation and discrimination to name me non-native. I used to be born and raised proper right here in Los Angeles County, and consultants say I make little or no influence on so-called “native” species.

Certainly, my household has most likely been in California longer than yours. I’m seemingly descended from the peafowl that late-19^th-century businessman Fortunate Baldwin dropped at his land in what’s now Arcadia, east of Pasadena. But the state committee that oversees chicken information nonetheless refuses so as to add us to its listing of “naturalized” birds.

So why are you sending us away from the one houses we’ve ever identified?

I used to be born and raised proper right here in Los Angeles County, and consultants say I make little or no influence on so-called ‘native’ species. Certainly, my household has most likely been in California longer than yours.

I prefer to suppose you’re threatened by our magnificence. Should you learn Nextdoor or the newspapers, you’ll discover scare headlines (“Wild Peacocks Terrorize California Metropolis”) and claims that we eat an excessive amount of of the improper stuff (like your flowers) and make an excessive amount of noise (we will get loud). However, heck, so do your youngsters!

Nonetheless, you complain that we dwell on the road and poop on the sidewalks. True—however Californians look the opposite means when their fellow people do the identical issues in lots of metropolis neighborhoods, from L.A.’s Skid Row to San Francisco’s Tenderloin.

Put the general public defecation situation apart, and I’d argue that we’re much better group function fashions than most Californians. We stroll in every single place, sustainably, in our hunt for meals, when you create greenhouse gases with brief drives to the grocery retailer. We’re social creatures—exterior on a regular basis, partaking with our neighbors—when you’re house alone, bingeing Netflix or watching cable information.

And when you’re dividing yourselves along with your political obsessions, we don’t even observe American politics. We’re not pro-Trump or tremendous woke. Certainly, you’re almost definitely to search out us in the course of the street, feathers out—so decelerate and don’t run us over! Because the poet William Blake wrote, “The satisfaction of the peacock is the glory of God.”

You would discover houses for us, however I’m not holding my breath. You’re not precisely dashing to search out houses for the people residing on the streets. However not less than you attempt to feed unhoused folks. Your largest county, Los Angeles, has made it unlawful to provide us meals.

In fact, your technique of ravenous us out received’t work. We had been omnivores and foragers earlier than it was cool, and so we’ll preserve feasting on crops, flowers, seeds, bugs, numerous small reptiles and amphibians, pet meals, cheese, and all of the greens in your backyard.

Nonetheless need to eliminate us? It received’t be simple. We’re wild animals, and onerous to wrangle. And we’re way more loyal to California than most people.

In any case, we don’t need to pay extortionate rents, large mortgages, or your excessive taxes.