Okay, so someone linked this article to me tonight, and I’m just. So thoroughly disgusted currently. I don’t know who this guy is, the article says “Tituss” from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Here’s the thing. I keep peafowl. Have for years. At this point, I can read peacock body language better than I read most human body language. And that bird? That bird is very uncomfortable. The harness looks ill fitting, and you can see clearly in the first photo that he is ducking down to try to back out of the harness to escape. In the second photo you can see by the wide set of his legs, the bend of his ankles, and the slightly open wings that he is trying to lie down and is being held up by the harness (which, again, looks ill fitting and uncomfortable). In the third photo, he is again trying to lie down and is only marginally more successful (and still, to me, looks uncomfortable/unhappy by the way he is holding his legs and not actually lying down).
The other thing is that putting a peacock on a leash in a harness is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. As someone who literally has a pet pea in the house who is probably the tamest pea out there, I can with 100% certainty tell you that I would never, ever put her into a harness or on a leash. I would never endanger her in that manner.
Because peafowl have incredibly powerful legs and wings, and thin, hollow bones. One good flush (the motion of jumping into the air to take flight) while trapped on a leash could result in bruising and even broken bones that would, if nothing else, cost thousands of dollars to repair, if they even can be (repairing bird bones is amazingly difficult and not generally very successful). Peafowl flush with enough power to break their own necks if they flush in an enclosed area- I should know, I lost a girl a few years ago to that very thing during a bad thunder storm, when she spooked right up into the ceiling of her coop.
As if that’s not enough, birds - wild birds, game fowl like peacocks - are 100% capable of stressing out so hard that they go into shock and die. They can literally get so upset it kills them, and being restrained (for example, being walked on a leash in a harness down a city street where there’s a lot of things that ping as DANGER to peafowl) is a definite stressor.
I don’t watch this show. I don’t know this person. I don’t have any more information than what I can very clearly see in these photos about what is going on, but it makes me ill to see. This man clearly has no repertoire with this bird- it wants out and away, and should NOT have been made to do this.
And I want to be clear- I am not against folks owning peafowl as pets. I’m against people putting peafowl through situations in which they are unhappy and uncomfortable.
This lady? This lady is doing it right- peacock perched on her arm, and the bird is clearly relaxed and comfortable riding around with her and sitting near her. I cannot tell if he’s wearing a harness (if he is, it fits well and comfortably and the line attaches under the bird’s breastbone instead of on their back) or if she has leg tethers (seems more likely) like a falconer. Either way, this is a safer, happier bird.
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