Book Review: Why Peacocks? An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World's Most Magnificent Bird

"The birds were only shadows behind bright lines and dots.  They were completely protected from predators, and yet I'd defeated the reason for having them at all.  It's like the tree that falls in the forest: Is a peacock still magnificent if he can't be admired from outside the garbage coop?"

Journalist Sean Flynn had not been especially interested in acquiring peafowl to adorn his North Carolina home.  The birds were an impulse acquisition spurred on by his wife, who responded to a friend-of-a-friend who was looking to rehome some birds.   Once the initial trio arrived, however, Flynn found himself increasingly entranced by the birds.  Soon, affection begins to grow into (expensive, time-consuming) obsession, causing the author to ponder the question - why peacocks?

The resultant book, Why Peacocks: An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World's Most Magnificent Bird, is mostly the story of Flynn and his family coming to terms with their stewardship of some unusual pets.  This is the part of the book that I found less interesting - I've spent a lot of my life working around peafowl, have made every amateur mistake that you could make, and have limited interest in hearing someone else go through the exact same things.  What I was most interested in was hearing what he had to say about the bigger picture of peacocks - why this bird looms so large in our shared culture.

And, to be fair, there was some of that.  Flynn tells us about the role of peafowl in the ancient world, from the Islamic version of the Garden of Eden to Greek myth to King Solomon's tributes.  He tells us about peacocks adorning castle grounds and castle banquet halls (as an attractive, but reportedly unpalatable, main course), and about peafowl coming to America, and about the creation of the beautiful Peacock Room now on display in the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery in Washington, DC.  Natural history of the birds is given a very brief mention (including two references to jaguars predating peacocks, even though the former are from the Americas and the later from Asia).  He visits peafowl breeder associations and expositions, meeting people who dedicate their lives to the birds.  And, on the flip side, he puts on his crime-writer hat and investigates a spate of peafowl-killings by people who have become angry about the introduced birds damaging their lawns and cars.

This is the stuff that I enjoyed most (well, not the revenge killings) - exploring the duality of the peacock... which you could do for any other animal.  In reality, it's a bird.  It eats, it mates, it defecates, it does all the other things a "lesser" bird would do.  But at the same time, it's also something more than a bird, something that we've created in our minds as a symbol of luxury, elegance, and beauty.  The image is fine for most people, who don't actually have to deal with the birds on a daily basis.  If you do, however, it helps to take a less-romantic, more practical view of the birds.  Then, it doesn't seem like as much of a personal affront to find your yard covered with blobs of what looks (but certainly doesn't smell) like chocolate soft-serve ice cream.

Over the years, I've known a lot of animal people who have fallen under the spell of one species or another, becoming obsessed by it.  Sometimes the triggering factor is the species rarity, or the danger is possesses, or its uniqueness (never underestimate the willingness of zookeepers to fall in love with an animal for the primary reason that no one else has heard of it).  What makes the peacock unique is that it is an animal that has, for millennia, been able to keep so many of us under its collective spell.

Why Peacocks: An Unlikely Search for Meaning in the World's Most Magnificent Bird at Amazon