Where Peafowl Rule the Roost
The procession passes through the misty, twisting streets and vine-covered canyons of Santa Susana Knolls every day at sunrise.
Scant traffic slows to an occasional standstill. Joggers stare. Dogs bark, and cats give chase.
Because right there--right in the middle of the street, near that hairpin curve--strut peafowl. Gaggles of them. Peahens with dishwater-dull plumage peck at the asphalt. Gaudy, plump peacocks roost on any convenient roof, bobbing their metallic blue heads and flashing iridescent plumage for the world to admire.
And, oh, the racket.
You can hear it everywhere: a screech that sounds like a cross between a terrified human’s shriek and a very big cat’s meow.
“It almost sounds like they’re talking to each other,” said Linda Kellstrom, a Knolls resident and peafowl enthusiast who lives next door to the birds’ favored hangout off Katherine Road. “One squawks over here. Then another over there. . . . We have the traffic slow down around here so they’re not hurt.”
Where the feral peafowl came from--and exactly why they settled in these funky nooks and crannies outside Simi Valley--is the source of much neighborhood folklore.
Every tale, though, involves a shadowy bird lady, at least two of the radiant, raucous birds and some prolific propagation.
The most popular theory: A woman bought the birds as pets nigh two decades ago and let them breed to their heart’s content. When zoning code enforcers came knocking, the woman said the birds were wild and just happened to live in these parts.
Another version has an older woman breeding the birds--just a few, mind you. Depending on the raconteur, the peafowl either: a) escaped from their cages during a fierce rainstorm years ago, or b) were set free after the woman died.
“They came from people who had them as pets and set them free or let them escape. They propagate very quickly,” said Gloria Goldman, who is Ventura County’s zoning code enforcer for the area. “They walk in all the streets. They do their thing screeching in trees. They nest wherever some sucker is willing to feed them.”
Even code enforcers such as Goldman are baffled about precisely how 150 to 200 of the hulking exotic birds--a kind of pheasant--came to nest in this unincorporated swath of Ventura County between Simi Valley and Chatsworth. Chances are, they didn’t fly from their native India or Sri Lanka.
No matter. The peafowl are here. And if their proprietary dawn--and dusk--processions are any indicator, they’re here to stay.
The reason: Despite half a dozen resident complaints a year, usually during the cacophonous early-summer breeding season, county code enforcers cannot regulate birds who don’t actually belong to someone.
By county law, no one with fewer than a half-acre of land may own a peafowl, Goldman said. With 10 or fewer acres, a bird lover may house up to two peafowl, or four if enough neighbors sign a waiver.
In the Knolls, no owner claims the birds, “so they’re free to come and go as they please,” Goldman said. “They’re pretty out of control. . . . But the ones who are running around wild, we don’t have any control over them.”
How much locals dislike the peafowl correlates with proximity. With the notable exception of close peafowl neighbor Kellstrom, the rule seems to be: The closer the birds, the stronger the dislike.
“Everybody wants to shoot them,” said one close neighbor, who declined to give her name. “There’s two too many of them--a male and a female.”
Many Knolls residents enjoy the birds, but from a distance. From windows and yards, locals watch them clamber onto fence posts, roofs and the occasional hammock.
On a recent power walk through the hills, Simi Valley resident Rosie Cramer said the birds perk up her day.
“Every morning I walk--coming from traffic and cars--to this natural beauty,” she said. “When you see all the peacocks coming down [from their perches], you stop and look. You can’t keep walking.”
But those who live close by call the birds a flat-out menace.
The eat-almost-anything peafowl plunder lush gardens, rutting around for snails, nibbling on nibbles and gumming gladiolus.
“I’ve lost a lot of flowers--perennials, stalks, snapdragons,” said neighbor Terry Birnie. “They trample tall flowers. If you’re a gardener, you wait for months for these flowers. And then they’re gone.”
Much as Goldman wishes she could assist residents distressed by the birds’ mayhem, she says her hands are tied.
“I think, in the old days, when animal [regulation departments] had money, they used to go out and trap them” for release in less populated areas, she said. “That can’t be done now,” she said.
“But,” she added, “if anyone wants peacocks as pets, we’ll help them trap ‘em.”
