[Reader-list] Peacocks blues in California

[Patrice Riemens]

Yet another 'Indian' problem - but at least you can laugh about it!



Wall Street Journal w/e 25-27 June 2010
original at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703438604575315243797353432.html#


Peacocks Are an Acquired Taste Some in California Don't Share
Beautiful but Rude, They Rule the Roost; Hit and Runs in Rolling Hills
Estates

By TAMARA AUDI

ROLLING HILLS ESTATES, Calif.—To keep the peace at neighborhood cookouts
and cocktail parties, folks here stick to an unspoken rule: Don't discuss
religion, politics — or peacocks.

Skipping the first two is easy enough. But the third is tough to avoid,
because the birds—which can grow to 13 pounds—are often screeching from
treetops or nesting in front yards.

For decades, peacocks and peahens have thrived in a cluster of little
cities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, a hilly chunk of land jutting into
the Pacific Ocean just south of Los Angeles. By one estimate, the
peninsula's peafowl population has grown to about 1,000.

But as more young professionals escape Los Angeles for the bucolic
peninsula, there are fresh demands to thin the peafowl population. Even
some longtime residents agree.

Recently, the Strawberry Lane home owners' association of 35 homes here
voted to secede from the "peacock protection zone" established in the city
by two neighborhoods. Now, Strawberry Lane homeowners can call the city to
trap and remove birds hanging out in their yards. The birds are sent to
sanctuaries or breeders.

"They're charming, but it's gotten out of hand," said Ginny Xepolis on a
recent morning outside her cream-colored house. A mother peahen scurried
across her driveway with a new batch of chicks.

"See?" she said, pointing to a dazzling blue male clambering across her
cedar-shingled roof. "They rule the street." Peacocks can fly into trees
or onto roofs but they aren't made for long-distance flights.

Ms. Xepolis said she spends about $2,000 a year to repair shingles damaged
by the birds' talons. Her neighbors complained about large peacock
droppings spoiling garden parties and soiling driveways.

The Strawberry Lane decision ruffled feathers one street over on
Dapplegray Lane—and made the Dapplegray neighborhood the last peacock
haven on the peninsula where the birds can't be removed. Pro- and
anti-peafowl forces there are locked in a feud over whether the
neighborhood, like the rest of the city, should allow some trapping.
[Peacock]

"It's like a more subtle version of the Hatfields and the McCoys without
guns," said A. J. Poulin, the president of the Dapplegray Lane Property
Owners Association.

Some peafowl defenders accuse peafowl haters of shooting the birds with BB
guns and deliberately running over them.

A sign attached to the front gate of one home reads: "$1,000 reward for
information leading to the arrest and conviction of individuals shooting
or otherwise harming a peafowl."

A chart kept by Linda and Kirk Retz, a pair of peafowl-defending lawyers
who live in the neighborhood, tracks peafowl deaths. The Retzses send the
dead birds for necropsies.

According to the Retzses' chart, one bird was shot dead in 2007. In 2009,
the peafowl gun death rate doubled to two. Since 2007, another 23 peafowl
were hit by cars. A chart footnote reads: "Some birds seem to have been
run over on purpose..."

According to local historians, the peacocks were first brought to the
peninsula in 1924 as a gift for banker Frank Vanderlip, who once owned the
entire peninsula.

Residents who love the birds say that reducing the peafowl population
would destroy the rural way of life that attracted them in the first
place. "All of my family came to love the beautiful peafowl and to
appreciate them as symbols of a slower, more peaceful lifestyle," said
Kathy Gliksman, who has lived in The Lanes, as the neighborhood is called,
for 38 years.

"Whenever I hear a peafowl it's just one more reminder I'm not in Century
City," in West Los Angeles, said Mr. Retz, who moved to the neighborhood
10 years ago.

But Mr. Retz's neighbor, Valerie Goodman, compares the peafowl's piercing
wail to a "bunch of car alarms going off at the same time."

"The noise is deafening. You can't be on the phone," says Ms. Goodman, who
runs a marketing business from her home. Ms. Goodman says she was recently
mortified when friends came for brunch in their new black BMW. When they
left, they found a peacock clawing at its own reflection in the car door.
The door needed repainting.

Mr. Poulin, the homeowner's association president, says some residents
have refused to pay their monthly dues until something is done about the
peacocks. He says he naively suggested a meeting to address the peafowl
issue last year. It lasted for more than two hours and no consensus was
reached.

Like many newcomers, Mr. Poulin, a software developer, says he moved from
West Los Angeles four years ago to give his young family more space and a
rural community experience.

Many neighbors keep donkeys, horses, chickens and goats. The neighborhood
is laced with miles of riding trails, and horses often clomp down the
streets with their riders. At dusk, neighbors sip wine in their front
yards while their children run about. The smell of home-cooked dinners
wafts through open doors and windows. Peacocks roam freely, gathering in
this yard or that, then fluttering into trees or onto rooftops. The birds
let out a screech when trucks roll past.

Mr. Poulin says he understands the frustrations of the peacock haters and
wouldn't mind seeing the Dapplegray flock thinned a bit. But he is
reluctant to force the issue, he says, because, "I don't want to stick my
neck out and get it chopped off by the peafowl-loving crowd. They're more
organized."