Not your ordinary neighbor

Magnolia Forest residents in Pearl River have a different sort of neighbor to contend with.

Most people have lived, at some point in their life, next to a grumpy Mr. Wilson, an encroaching Fred and Ethel or even a jovial Ned Flanders. To say the least, we’ve all experienced our share of oddities living next door.

But imagine waking to the trumpeting of a neighbor roosting atop your roof about 4 feet tall with a tail of feathers 5 feet in length.

Magnolia Forest residents, specifically the northern part of the subdivision around Nottoway and Fischer drives, are living in synergy with an adult India Blue peacock, and they’ve been doing so for nearly 20 years.

The males are called peacocks while the females are referred to as peahens.

The story goes, as told by 30-year resident Dawn Reves living on Nottoway Drive, a family moved in on a nearby street with the peacock as a pet, but when they eventually moved away, they left the fowl behind to roam the neighborhood. And that’s just what he does, said Joe Delcarpio, also living on Nottoway Drive, who often spies the bird traipsing down the street like a sentinel watching over the community.

The first encounter Reves had with the bird about 20 years ago shocked her into disbelief.

She said she was lying in her backyard sunbathing alone when she felt something grab her toe.

“It scared me to death because I knew I was alone,” Reves said.

Instead of an intruder or peeping-Tom preying on her, Reves was amazed to see a large peacock eyeing her.

She did what any animal-lover would do and adopted it as a pet by feeding it everyday.

“It comes around about this time everyday and we feed it cheap, dry cat food,” Steve Reves said while shaking a bag of the kibbles to call it near one evening.

Delcarpio, a medical school professor, and his family have come to call the bird Clinton while the Reves call it Perry the peacock and other neighbors refer to it with other pet-names.

As far as Delcarpio can tell, Clinton/Perry thrives in the large neighborhood located near the Pearl River.

But the many years of habitation in the quaint community have not always been fowl-heaven.

Both deputies for the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office at the time, Steve and Dawn remained home through Katrina.

“We had 40 trees fall on our property with six of them landing on our house,” Steve said. “After the storm was over and we didn’t see Perry the next three days following Katrina, we knew he didn’t make it.”

But, as in a Clint Eastwood movie with the western tune playing in the background, four days after the storm they spotted the bird emerge from the rubble, feathers intact but a little wind-whipped, Steve said.

“We were so relieved he was still around,” Dawn said.

No one knows how old the bird is, at best estimates, he’s 20 plus years old, which would mean he’s outlasted his expected lifespan of 15 to 20 years in captivity.

The Reves know their courageous feathered friend who chases raccoons from their yard with its large spurs will not live forever. They’ve even come close to purchasing a peahen to accompany him.

For now, Perry continues to roam the suburb of Slidell, greeting the members of the community with its large train of iridescent feathers and bellowing mating calls.

Peafowl are native to India, Java, Ceylon, Malaya and Congo but have made their way into the U.S. where they are quickly becoming a common exotic pet among people. In Palos Verdes, Calif. where a large bevy of peafowl roam, an organization, Friends of the Peacock, has been formed to protect and ensure their existence.