You might think of peacocks as flashy or extravagant birds, but you would be mistaken, when it comes to these peacocks in Surrey, British Columbia, who are just doing their best to dismantle residents’ expensive private property.
According to a local news report by CTV Vancouver, feral peacocks are “bearing powerful beaks and talons against luxury cars” in the neighborhood. Maybe it’s because they see their reflection and think it’s another peacock. Or maybe it’s because property is theft.
“With the dark-colored cars, they can see their reflection fairly clearly, so they mistake that as another peacock and have at it,” one resident told CTV. This resident went on to explain the peacocks persistence—“They’ll get the front panel, the side panel, the rear panel and then work around to the other side.”
The peacocks have reportedly done thousands of dollars of damage to these expensive cars.
But this local resident’s opinion is suspect—just the kind of thing a member of the land-owning class, fearful of an impending revolution, might say. After all, do you really think such majestic creatures are stupid enough to attack their own reflections? Could they instead be pecking at these vehicles because they are rising up against glittering consumerist symbols of waste and environmental disaster? Are peacocks, having spent hundreds of years caged in the gardens and palaces of the aristocracy, rising up to cast off the associations humans forced upon them? Would you not also relentlessly dismantle luxury goods if you were equipped with moral fortitude, in addition to a powerful beak and talons?
I’m not saying these peacocks are definitely trying to dismantle capitalism. But one can hope!