Fowl deeds: Peacocks are getting shot by BB gunslingers

Someone is shooting the peacocks of Coconut Grove with BB guns.

Animal lovers are outraged. Colleen Finnegan, one particularly compassionate advocate of the beautiful but polarizing birds, has tried to rescue three of the injured peafowl and fears the situation could devolve into a killing spree.

“It could be a resident who hunts them early in the morning and wants to get rid of them, or a sicko, or a young kid,” she said. “Who knows? But I’m scared because more peacocks are going to get shot and they’re going to suffer. It makes me angry and sad that people do these things to a helpless animal.”

Peacock proliferation has grown into a nasty problem in certain Miami neighborhoods where the invasive species has made its home, exacerbated by residents who feed them. The birds produce tremendous amounts of feces. They squawk and howl at all hours. They destroy plants and dig holes in lawns. They roost on roofs and in trees. They peck at their reflection on cars.

The city and the county’s animal control services say they can’t eradicate or remove peafowl because they are protected under bird sanctuary law.

It could be that a frustrated, sleep-deprived resident has taken matters into his or her own, cold hands.

“We’ve got the same problem down here with pythons, Muscovy ducks and iguanas that are non-native and multiply and become a nuisance,” said Amy Hays, who had a peahen stalking her and her Coral Gables neighbors for a time. The bird would approach her aggressively seeking food and chase her when she went jogging. “They’ve got it bad in the Grove. You’ll see 15 or 20 on one roof. They’re pooping everywhere. It’s like an invasion.”

Finnegan works at a plastic surgeon’s office in the Grove. She noticed an injured peahen dragging herself across the road a couple weeks ago. She called around and found out that the South Florida Wildlife Center in Fort Lauderdale is the only clinic of its kind willing to treat injured peafowl. So she followed the center’s instructions, put the peahen in a box, hailed an Uber, explained to the driver that he was making a very special delivery and paid $40 to send the bird to the clinic.

But the peahen, shot 10 times with BB pellets, could not be saved and had to be euthanized with an injection of sodium pentobarbital.

“She was paralyzed on one side, so they had to put her down,” Finnegan said.

The same thing happened last week when Finnegan found another wounded peahen along Secoffee Street, bundled her into a box with the aid of a garbageman who put a blanket around her, sent her via Uber to the wildlife center and was informed that the bird was “put out of her misery,” Finnegan said.

“We were hoping she could be saved and sent back to rejoin her family,” Finnegan said. “The other birds never abandoned her. They stayed by her. You could see the pain in her eyes and you could hear them crying. It breaks your heart.”

Finnegan tried to rescue a third bird a few days ago but could not manuever her into a box. On Tuesday, she saw what might have been that bird dead by the side of the road.

Dr. Renata Schneider said she has treated four peafowl this month and saved two of them.

“X-rays usually show BB pellets and sometimes we take them out, sometimes we don’t because birds are good at walling off foreign bodies,” Schneider said. “Some have been shot by arrows, although that is more common with ducks. Some have been hit by a car. Some are unable to walk due to capture myopathy – which is like exhaustion – and we can rehydrate them.”

Schneider is currently caring for three peafowl chicks that were dropped off at the center.

Schneider, director of wildlife rehab, and her colleagues report any evidence of animal cruelty and post photos of abuse on the center’s Wall of Shame.

“But without a witness most of those are dead-end cases,” she said. “If you shoot a peafowl and leave it limping, that is a felony. People don’t know how to eradicate them humanely.“

The center is prohibited by law from releasing non-native species back into the wild, so they must find an owner to take them.

Lloyd Brown, director of Wildlife Rescue of Dade County, will euthanize injured peafowl but he can’t rehabilitate and release them under the law.

“The law is designed to protect native species,” Brown said. “I make it clear up front that if you bring a hurt peacock to me, I’m going to kill it humanely.”

Like everybody else, Brown is confounded about how to solve the peafowl problem.

“Shooting and killing peafowl on your property is not illegal, but I don’t support that because I grew up around them, and if you’re using your Kalashnikov that’s going to lead to other problems, so it’s not an effective way to reduce the population,” he said. “Sterilization would require money and vets.

“My advice is, if you don’t like peafowl, don’t live here.”

Schneider’s advice is to never feed the birds – “which is rule No. 1 for all wildlife,” she said – and to find the peahen’s eggs, dispose of them and replace them with eggs from the grocery store or golf balls.

Finnegan will continue to be on the lookout for injured birds.

“If you’re going to shoot them, get the job done, but do we really want people shooting guns in a residential area?” she said. ”I understand they can be a bit of a nuisance. I wish there was a peacock farm or sanctuary where they could live. There’s got to be a better way to control them because there are so many babies. They are gorgeous animals and it’s awful to see them mistreated.”

This story was originally published October 19, 2017 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Fowl deeds: Peacocks are getting shot by BB gunslingers."