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Peacocks' cries echo across generations

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By TOM JACKSON

Published: September 27, 2009

LAND O' LAKES - Having grown up summering in the company of peafowl (more about which in a moment), news of a neighborhood kerfuffle over the colorful, brash and uncommonly narcissistic turkey-sized birds tugged at me in ways a dispute over firefighter holiday pay never could.

Not that I lack respect for the county's fire rescue personnel. Like every pre-pubescent lad, I daydreamed of being lashed to the back driver's seat of a screaming red hook-and-ladder truck on the way to some rescue.

But I outlasted my youthful fantasy (again, thank heaven for those who don't).

On the other hand, I have yet to outlive the notion of someday settling on acreage sufficient to support, contain and accommodate a modest flock (or, more accurately, "party") of - that word again - peafowl: that is, the collective term for this member of the pheasant family.

National Geographic explains it thusly: "The term 'peacock' is commonly used to refer to birds of both sexes. Technically, only males are peacocks. Females are peahens, and together, they are called peafowl."

At home in Florida

Scientists recognize two types: blue and green. Green peafowl are native to central sub-Saharan Africa, and are uncommon. Blue peafowl, native to India, fairly thrive in portions of the United States. Among those places is - or was, anyway, until recently - the modest Foxwood subdivision off Willow Bend Parkway east of Land O' Lakes Boulevard.

Kenny Keith, avowed animal lover, estimates 11 of the birds remain after a resident hired a private trapper to round up the birds who trespassed on her distinctively tidy homestead.

According to news reports, the trapper netted only three - they were released in an Ocala sanctuary - but there are rumors of teenagers having captured others. "There used to be 30," laments Keith.

An uncle's preening legacy

My experience with peafowl derives from a bachelor uncle on my mother's side of the family. Byron Crouse, 4F during World War II, was home and thumbing through a magazine when his eyes fell on an ad for peacock hatchlings.

Family lore holds that Uncle Byron would buy anything if it was the right color, and soon enough he introduced a small collection of the regal birds to the family's west Tennessee farm.

Their descendants lent a royal presence to the place for most of the ensuing 45 years, roosting in walnut trees, ornamenting the yard with their mating-season fans, shattering the tranquility with their honks and plaintive shrieks and shaping the impressions of his nieces and nephews about what constituted a proper farm.

Their legacy endures. Last year for a school science project, the heir-apparent chose to a present a model of a peacock in ritualistic mating display. Hot-glued into the back of the bird's Styrofoam torso were fan feathers shed by Uncle Byron's peacocks.

Keyword: The Jax Files, for Tom Jackson's bonus musings.

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