Look Out Joe, We're Getting Exotic

I hear tell Joe Exotic has a couple large predatory cats prowling around his property.  Big deal.  So do we.  This here is Frank Frankerson.

Don't let his laid back demeanor fool you.  He's a natural born killer.  Of ants, lizards, mice and things.  When he's not lounging of course, which does happen to be most of the time.

And the killer on the left below, Daisy, while she looks quite innocent in her baby pix, has turned into the ferocious beast you see in the second photo. 

She routinely brings us birds and voles and other, larger vermin than Frank does.  She has also ferociously defended her turf against a couple wanna be visiting cats.  Don't let her cute face fool you,  she really is a bad ass.

And of course we have a rooster and a number of hens, hence the name of the blog.  So we got us a fine little menagerie going on here on our little slice of heaven.

I know, I know.  A lot of folks have domestic and barnyard animals.  A couple cats, a couple dogs, a couple hundred chickens.  Cows.  Pigs.  Goats.  Hamsters..

But we accidentally acquired something here recently that I think will set us apart from being a plain old country menagerie.  Something that just about puts us on par with Joe Exotic.

Meet Liberace, Libby, or Mr. Lovely as he is called from time to time.

This is him on our front deck on the morning he arrived.

I took the picture through the screen door because I didn't know if he was an attack peacock or not.  We have since discovered he is not.

So who's missing a peacock?  What's going on?

My lovely wife got in touch with a neighbor across the street who always has a finger on our neighborhood's pulse.  And she said there's a flock of them that live by the creek way back behind her property.  You know, Yondersville.  But apparently there's been a mountain lion with her cub that have been prowling recently, and that could be why Liberace has migrated our way.

He's been here over two weeks now.  He overnight's up on the roof.  I can't think of a safer place to overnight if you're trying to stay out of a mountain lion's mouth.

We've fed him a bit of cat food and chicken food, but he's mainly foraging and eating bugs, which I'm totally OK with.  And apparently peacocks are really good at killing snakes, so in rattlesnake territory they're probably not a bad idea to have around.  If one doesn't adopt you (like Liberace did us) than you could expect to pay $50 to 75 for an India Blue chick.

He hasn't been hard on any of the plants either, like chickens can be.  He strolls gracefully through the planted areas, selectively hunting and pecking.  Chickens are excavators, they'll scratch and tear up small plants and ground covers to make sure they're getting every last morsel of any given square foot.

Or maybe they just excavate for fun.  Here's what they've done to Fantasia Land over the years.  The actual surface level of the dirt used to be at the top of the gravel in both pictures.  The concrete was poured into an eighteen inch deep trench securing the chicken wire so that no varmints could dig underneath.  The chickens have dropped the surface level by twelve to eighteen inches.

I had to shore up the pier there several years ago. They had completely unearthed the original post and concrete.  Framed a three bag square piling.  It'll hold up the Golden Gate Bridge now.

Liberace does poop on the deck, so I started pretending the house is a boat that has a poop deck. 

Just what is a poop deck on a boat, anyway, you might be thinking?  Cause, you know, it sounds like it as the potential to be really awful.

I'll save you the trouble, a poop deck is: "the after most and highest deck of a ship, especially in a sailing ship where it typically forms the roof of a cabin in the stern."

Why do they call it a poop deck?  The name originates from the French word for stern, la poupe.

I'm thinkin it's just a place to park your pooper.. 

Peacocks have a reputation for being loud and obnoxious, but Liberace really isn't a big talker.  The first time I heard him was when he decided he was going to try and get in the chicken coop.  He flapped up to the top of the fence but was immediately shocked by the hot electric wire.  He veered off quickly, and then walked around and squawked a bit.  I imagine he was swearing in peacock tongue.

And then he's been a little vocal from time to time during the night.  He has a couple different squawks, one of them sounds eerily like a large cat.  And the other is a "honk" that sounds like a goose.  But we're used to roosters crowing at all hours of the day and night, we hardly even hear Liberace.

We have done some reading, and there are mixed reviews about him hanging out with our chickens.  There is the potential he could introduce disease, and because of his size he could be a bit of a bully to them.  But he has managed to get in the coop four times now and has always been quite docile and polite.  The chickens are a little freaked out, but there has not been any sort of a scene.

He's a pretty smart bird.  I let him out of the coop twice, and then the other night I happened to see how he is entering. He goes around back, hops up on the hen house roof, hops over the electric wire, then finds a wide enough place between the clothesline hung to keep hawks out and hops right down.  I have no idea how he gets out, but he was out this morning.

I do think our flock is one of the reasons he ended up this way, that and high altitude roof safety.  He goes up around the coop a couple times a day, and so far had ended up inside the coop the last four days. But now that I know he can also get out I'm not as concerned.

He seems like he's been around humans.  We can usually get within a couple feet of him before he gets a little skittish, and he will also seek us out if he hears us outside.  And he's got a couple hang out spots, one on the front poop deck and one on the back poop deck.

We have no idea how long he's going to hang around, but we're certainly not going to chase him away.   It's kinda fun to look out in the yard and see a peacock wandering around, and he doesn't seem to be upsetting the balance and harmony around here.  Who knows, when mating season comes around this fall maybe he'll attract a mate and we'll start a flock of  peacocks. 

Then we'll really be exotic.  And loud, probably.