Peacock Pride : Ranch Life Not Always Paradise for Family’s Flock of Feathered Friends

The noises that emit from Pepe Sanchez’s ranch high up in the Santa Monica Mountains can be terrifying.

Hearing awful screeches, people new to the neighborhood or who happen to be passing by on steep, winding Yerba Buena Road come rushing up his dirt driveway, ready to rescue someone in dire need.

“They say, ‘Is somebody hollering for help?’ ” Sanchez said.

No help needed.

The source of the shrieks is Sanchez’s flock of pet peacocks, which sound an alarm whenever they are startled.

“They see something that’s not quite normal, they holler,” Sanchez said. “Like watchdogs.”

Nobody in the Sanchez family quite remembers when they got their first few peacocks, but they guess it was almost 20 years ago.

Even though the birds are not exactly loving creatures--they have absolutely no interest in receiving pats from human beings--there is a bond between the Sanchez family and the iridescent blue and green birds.

Most kids have lemonade stands; the Sanchez children set up peacock feather stands on the mountainous road 12 miles outside Thousand Oaks.

“They seem to be very much a part of us,” Sanchez said, watching fondly as the flock pecked at the ground near him. “They love to be around us.”

Despite their longevity--Sanchez says he still has one of the original birds--the peacocks are relative newcomers to the ranch.

Sanchez and his father bought the land in 1951, 160 acres for a mere $7,500. Some of the land has been sold off since then, but Sanchez still has about 80 acres of strikingly beautiful land just below Boney Mountain. He hopes his children will be able to hold on to the property for future generations.

At 70, Sanchez is beginning his eighth decade in the Santa Monicas. He was 6 months old when he arrived from Mexico in 1925 with his parents. He grew up as a cowboy, but as roundups and rodeos faded from the landscape, he opened a grading and earth moving business.

A tribute to the way he makes his living lines his property line on Yerba Buena--a collection of ancient tractors and bulldozers forms a rusty silhouette against the hillside.

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A sign arching above the driveway announces that a visitor has arrived at Peacock Paradise. But paradise is not so paradisiacal for the fowl themselves. Though they have the run of the place, the coyotes and bobcats that roam the steep, rocky terrain near Sanchez’s ranch have discovered just how tasty a big, fat peacock can be. The flock has been radically reduced over the years from 40 to little more than a dozen.

The birds just keep disappearing, leaving behind a disappointed Sanchez and only a few brilliantly colored mementos.

“Just the feathers,” he said sadly. “We can follow the feather trail.”

The coyotes are partial to the pregnant peahens, which like to disappear into the brush to lay their eggs. So Sanchez and the rest of the family have taken to following the peahens, scooping them and the eggs up and keeping them in a pen.

This summer two young peacocks or peahens--it’s impossible to tell the sex until they get older and develop their brilliant tails--pace the inside of the cage. Their mother hops on and off the roof of a little house Sanchez has built for the birds inside the pen. Impatient to get out and roam with the other birds, she does not seem to appreciate the protection.

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Up close, the birds are far more substantial than one would think. When they land, it is with a serious thud. Their flight is mostly limited to getting up higher, such as to the upper branches of a tree or the roof of Sanchez’s house. Every morning they announce their awakening by clumsily thumping across the roof.

“Whenever we have someone new staying at the house they wake up all worried about what’s happening on the roof,” said Tesi Sanchez-Sims, one of Pepe’s five children. A schoolteacher and sculptor, Sanchez-Sims has incorporated two of her father’s loves into one example of her artwork, welding saw blades and pieces of tractors into a metal peacock.

He credits her with keeping the original flock going. At one point, she even bought a new pair, peahen and peacock, hoping to introduce a little fresh blood into the line, he said. They were snow-white but otherwise identical to the other birds.

“They looked just like lace,” Sanchez-Sims said.

But the birds never got a chance to mingle. The coyotes snapped up the peahen and the peacock encountered deep prejudice among his flock mates.

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“They just wouldn’t have anything to do with him,” Sanchez said. “He was an outcast. He lived to be an old peacock, but he was a lonely, lonely peacock.”

Sanchez said he will get a few more peacocks if he has to, to keep the strain going. The noisy creatures have become somewhat of a neighborhood legend, and he said he wants the tradition to continue.

But lest anyone label him a peacock sentimentalist, Sanchez can dispel that notion swiftly by recounting one tale of family peacock lore.

“One day one of the peacocks, he was flying on a windy day and he lost his balance or something,” he said. “He hit the corner of the building with his chest and fell down dead. So I plucked him up nice and we cooked him and cooked him for hours.”

But even with a nice stuffing, the bird was a culinary disaster.

“He was just like trying to eat plastic or tough shoe leather,” Sanchez said. “It looks like turkey, but, ah, it’s tough.”