Pinellas Park denizens call the authorities on birds gone wild, which await a tranquil fate.
By ANNE LINDBERG
Published May 12, 2004
[Times photos: James Borchuck]
One of four feral chickens sprints through the back yard of a Pinellas Park home recently. They root for bugs in neighbors' gardens.
Two chickens do what chickens do in a yard in the 3700 block of 67th Avenue N, but once rounded up, they will be able to root for worms and give early morning wakeup calls all they want on a farm in Hillsborough County. The garden-tampering chickens are second priority, after the car-scratching peacocks.
PINELLAS PARK - Fowl doings are afoot here.
Wild peacocks and chickens are making life miserable for local residents in two neighborhoods. Code officers have called in a wildlife expert for help.
The peacocks are first on the agenda because they're doing the most damage by scratching cars, said police Sgt. Tracey Schofield, who oversees Pinellas Park's Code Enforcement Department. Four or five of the birds are frequenting the general area from Park Boulevard to 70th Avenue N between 61st and 62nd streets.
"I know they're not the easiest birds to handle," Schofield said.
After that, the chickens will go. They generally can be found near Youth Park, around 37th and 38th streets N between 67th and 68th avenues.
"We have three (hens) roaming the area and a rooster," said Sue Grace, a Youth Park area homeowner. "The problem is, he likes to get in my neighbors' flower beds and, I guess rooting for bugs, whatever, they make a mess of the flower bed."
The chickens first appeared in November or December, Grace said. They hung out in an empty lot but soon moved to residents' yards. The 6:30 a.m. crowing didn't help.
Grace's husband tried to catch the rooster at one point when it came into the back yard, but the bird escaped into a tree.
"I found out they fly a lot better than I thought," she said. "It flew pretty high up into the tree."
Grace said she called around looking for someone to catch the obstreperous birds but got little help and several jokes.
Finally, she called the city's Community Development Department, which passed the problem to Code Enforcement.
Schofield hired Charles Carpenter, owner of Animal Rescue of Florida, who rid Freedom Lake Park of its Muscovy ducks.
The peacocks first need to establish a territory, Carpenter said. Right now, they wander at will, which makes it hard to find them so they can be fed tranquilizers, he said. And it makes it even harder to track them so they can be caught once they are drugged.
The initial goal, he said, is to feed them in one place until they habitually gather there. Then it's time for the tranquilizer.
Carpenter said he often gets calls to remove peacocks. Last month, he captured 14 in the Orlando area. Despite their reputation among some people as being vicious birds, they're not that hard to deal with.
"We deal with alligators every day, so it's kind of difficult for us to consider a peacock vicious. It's all relative. If you go out and try to take a feather from one, he's probably going to have a conversation with you," Carpenter said. "The most aggressive birds that you find out in areas like that are swans and geese. Geese are vicious."
Peacocks are territorial, which is why they attack cars, he said.
The peacock sees himself in the shiny paint job - especially on newer cars - and thinks it's another male peacock. Then they do what they do to other birds.
"They attack it with their feet. Oh, yeah, they'll destroy a paint job," Carpenter said. "To them, it's another male infringing upon their harem. They'll start (and go) from one end to another."
While folks wait for the peacocks and chickens to be evicted, jokes are running as wild as the birds.
The comments run from puns - some residents are crying "fowl" - to city spokesman Tim Caddell's tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the city should hold its own Iron Chef Pinellas Park.
"The surprise ingredient would be peacock," Caddell said.
Kidding aside, the peacocks and chickens will not end up on someone's dinner table. They'll go to a Hillsborough farm, where they will be protected, Carpenter said.
They can say hello to the Freedom Lake Muscovys that already live there.
