Killing peacocks in the digital age

“The job is simple… get rid of a wild peacock that is disrupting our lives by any means necessary,” read the ad posted to Craigslist on June 13.

The peacock called very loudly every morning at about 5 a.m., waking up local homeowners and continuing to sound off for three hours, the ad said. The “wild” peacock, the ad said, had arrived about four months earlier.

“Please contact me so we can form a strategy to eliminate this bird, and also agree on how much you will be compensated,” read the ad.

Some neighbors thought the ornate pheasant was downright domesticated.

“He taps on our sliding glass window. We gave him bread,” said Mike Glass, who claimed that the peacock, whom his family named Azul, arrived in the neighborhood six years ago, and has been fed and befriended by various people in the community.

A woman who found the bird’s cadaver in her yard notified the Glass family of its demise.

Azul was likely shot once with a .22 caliber rifle on the roof of the woman’s home before it fell into the yard and proceeded to bleed out for between two and three hours, according to Glass’s observations.

Accompanying the now-deleted Craigslist ad was a satellite image of the neighborhood taken from Google Maps.

The Glass family recognized the icon over the home of Ragen Tilzey, who asked them to stop the bird’s noises in the past. Despite his alleged claim that the peacock arrived in the community four months ago, he knew the Glass family nursed Azul for years.

“Has a crime been committed?” asked Tilzey when contacted by local media.

California law prohibits the negligent discharge of a firearm, which arguably could include firing it in a residential area, especially at a bird on top of a person’s home.

Tilzey does not own a gun, he said.

There is no law against trapping, killing, or selling wild peacocks in California, so long as they are not someone’s property.