Peacock Pets

After our house fire the tenants left behind virtually all of their possessions.  We bent over backwards to give them the opportunity to come and collect the stuff, constantly asking them when they'd pick it up.  We gave them about a month, I suppose before finally wading in and throwing everything they left here out.  Mind you, they did come back several times to collect some things, and in reality there was not one thing left that anyone would have wanted to keep.

The strangest thing they left behind was their peacocks.  Yep, abandoned in the back yard, were three birds, two female and a male.  Apparently they make excellent pets, and they're certainly a talking point!  They had been left here for a week or more before we realised they were there.  After all, at this stage we were only dropping over to the house occasionally, as there wasn't much here to come over for.

The peacocks were roaming the neighbourhood.  Early in our visits they weren't in the backyard, but after a few trips over we noticed them in the backyard.  A visit later they had gone, so we though they'd been picked up, but on the next visit two of them were in the backyard.  Eventually we realised there were three of them using the backyard as a base, but not always here.  They can actually fly, so had no trouble clearing the six-foot fence both inwards and outwards.

We ended up having to provide food and water for them, as they were not being tended to at all, and after several weeks we contacted WIRES who were told the birds had been abandoned and to come around and pick them up.  A couple of volunteers dropped out to pick them up, but were told by the tenant not to get them.  By a strange quirk of fate, the tenant was working as a builder's labourer, and at this time he was actually working on a house directly opposite our house that had burnt!

WIRES volunteers made several visits, apparently, because we'd see that the peacocks were still there, ring them up and ask them to pickup the birds again, and they'd come out to the house only to be told by the tenant not to pick them up again!  This must have happened three or four times.

Eventually the tenants made arrangements for them to be re-homed and finally one afternoon we came around to the house and the birds were no longer there.  We've had a few strange pets over the years (eg rabbits and rats) but never peacocks.  It seems we have a lot to learn about looking after peacocks.  What they eat, for a start!