Nuisance, Brilliantly Colored

They are quite beautiful. Fully outstretched very few things on this earth can match the rich colour of the feathers of a peacock. These bizarre creatures strut around like members of a Royal family. They are proud, possessive and normally confined to zoos.

But here in England, every year, a peacock or two will escape from a zoo and make its way to some unsuspecting English village. This year that unfortunate village is Cookley in the fine Midlands county of Worcestershire.

And this year the peacocks have arrived in force. Cookley is a very quiet village. Peacocks, in case you haven't heard them, are extremely noisy. They squawk. Cookley is now going mad. Peacocks, obsessed as they are with the splendour of their feathery displays, take a very dim view of shiny automobiles. Because in the gleam of every automobile is another identical peacock, beaming back. This drives peacocks round the bend. They don't take to rivals, even imaginary reflected rivals.

The Cookley peacocks have bitten off no less than fifty automobile mirrors so far, and are regularly involved in battles to the death with mythical beasts that appear in the highly polished hoods of every Cookley car.

The peacock gang, there are fourteen of them, now stride up and down the main street of like sheriffs at high noon. Sensible residents retire indoors and erect shutters. Peacocks can fly. If they flap their huge ornate wings hard enough they can rise to roof height and land on your storm gutters – which, given the average weight of a fully grown peacock – 30 pounds and more - is enough to make the guttering collapse.

The good folk who live in Cookley are not happy. They are surrounded by some of the most stunning countryside in all of England, and by fourteen of the most attractive flying vandals in Christendom. Cookley is now ripe for retribution. Anyone fancy peacock pie?

By Ed Boyle